


Ever On and On

by alpheratz



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M, Orpheus Myth, Skyrim AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpheratz/pseuds/alpheratz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabe is an adventurer who finally got his lucky break, but he struggles to get his footing around his new servant Pete. Maybe he just needs to get out of the house - but the errand Victoria sends him on isn't quite what he had in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever On and On

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains some mild to moderate video game-style violence and brief moments of animal harm. This is a Skyrim AU, but knowledge of the video game isn't necessary to read this fic. It can be read as straight-up fantasy.
> 
> la_dissonance and lalejandra beta'd the crap out of this. Thank you both. ♥
> 
> This story was written for Wave One of the 2013 [Bandom Big Bang](http://bandombigbang.dreamwidth.org/) challenge, and, as such, there are accompanying works that you should check out! The art is embedded here and the mixes, cover art, and tracklistings can be viewed at the mixers' journals:
> 
> [Blessings Against the Thunder](http://morganya.dreamwidth.org/180446.html) by morganya. This is such a cool-sounding mix with lyrics that fit so well it's uncanny.  
> [Glory and Treasure](http://ktc.dreamwidth.org/14230.html) by ohnoktc. An entire SCORE made up of music from video game soundtracks!
> 
> Awesome art of faces and incredible armor by [zombiekisses](http://zombiekisses.tumblr.com):
> 
> Please check out these awesome works and leave their authors feedback! 

A rough ride back from Lost Valley Redoubt, a highwayman post that he _swears_ wasn't there just a week ago, a thunderstorm painting the sky with lurid colors, and Gabe gets into Whiterun past three in the morning, with a wet, smelly horse that's pissed as fuck, a numb ass, and the start of a cough settling into his lungs.

It's late, late, late, but he's victorious, covered in glory and treasure, blood and grime, spider venom and the dust of crumbling bones. He hands the horse off at the stables behind the Bannered Mare, firmly telling the stablehand to keep it, no, really. Next time he'll carry all his shit himself. He hoists his sacks of gear over his shoulders, and kicks open the inn door with his boot, making a dent in the wood with the steel armor.

If they wanted the door to be dent-free, they shouldn't have set up shop in Skyrim. They shouldn't have set up shop in Tamriel. A quieter country many horizons away might hold perfection, but this one doesn't. It won't ever come close.

He drips on the dented, gouged wood floor and pulls off his helmet. "I need a room," he announces to the gathering at large. He's bothering the few people who're still passing time at the tables, but no one's going to pick a fight with him right now. "And a towel."

The innkeeper had been dozing, slumped over her desk, but now she wakes up, struggling to contain her pissed off expression. It softens when she sees Gabe, and even further when her gaze dips to his purse. Gabe hides a grin. Some things are comforting simply because they're familiar.

"Why, it's Gabriel! You’re back in one piece from your travels.”

"Fuck yeah, Indret darling." Gabe drops his sacks by Indret's desk and leans over the counter. It's been a few months since he's seen breasts. He needs to reacquaint himself.

Indret knocks him in the forehead with a knuckle so fast Gabe doesn't even have time to regret removing his helmet.

“Eyes up and quit dripping all over my floor."

"At least it's water, darling, not blood," Gabe offers with a winning smile and leans away from Indret's hands.

"This time." Indret scowls. "Horse muck and barrow mud in my inn. I should make you vagrants hose off in the stables before setting foot inside."

Gabe gives a pathetic cough, watching Indret hopefully, and she huffs and disappears into a side room. Gabe looks around for a likely place to sit down and rest his legs. As much as he doesn't need to sit down after three days in the saddle, he hasn't got much standing left in him either.

The inn's both changed and unchanged from the last time he passed through; same few boozehound townsfolk having a much-too-late last mug of ale, a different mix of road dust-covered adventurers who have lost the sense of time of day.

Earlier in the night, there must've been talk, story-trading, tales of treasure lost and recovered, and courtship. Now, however, the room is quiet, sleepy, and dusky with the lanterns low on oil.

There's a head he knows in a softly-lit corner, worn night-dark armor and a dully gleaming dagger he'd recognize anywhere. 

"Well, hey," he says to himself and approaches as quietly as he knows, stepping softly on the floorboards. Perhaps there can be courtship even now.

Her thief's hand is idly stroking a glass of mead, and her cowl is gathered around her neck, her hair neatly pinned in place by the folds.

"Hello, Victoria."

Victoria doesn't twitch a muscle, and neither does she reach for her dagger. Gabe is touched. He's welcome.

"Gabe," Victoria says measuredly. She turns her head slightly, hair spilling out of her cowl. She looks lovely, her eyes shadowed but steady. "Well, sit before I slit your throat. You're making the back of my neck prickle on my night off."

"So sorry." Gabe slides into the chair opposite. There's a half-demolished wheel of cheese on the table, as well as four bottles of Honningbrew mead. He shakes each of them in succession. Only one still has some liquid sloshing around on the bottom. "Do you mind?" he says, putting the bottle to his mouth. "It must be special, with the way you've emptied them all."

Victoria's eyes narrow.

"Of course, your next bottle is on me," Gabe says hastily. "Indret, more mead here, doll. My friend must be watered."

"Thanks," says Victoria once her glass is refilled. "What brings you to this hold? All that's around here are bandit hideouts and troll caves. Not worth the bother for someone like you."

Gabe sprawls back in his chair and breaks off a chunk of cheese with his fingers, grinning at the way Victoria's nostrils flare when he shoves it into his mouth, fingers and rind and all. "I'd think it wasn't worth the bother for someone like you. It's hardly the richest place in Skyrim." 

Victoria's face is completely blank, rarely a good sign. Gabe has the privilege of seeing her annoyance. "Well, regardless. I was passing through on my way to Riften a few months back. It was to my liking, so I stayed. Got a new set of armor made. Met the Jarl."

"The Jarl? Indeed." 

Victoria drinks from her glass, tipping her head back. Gabe's eyes catch on the flashing blue necklace at her throat, and on her throat itself, so pale and strong.

"She has many knick-knacks around her quarters," Gabe says with only the suggestion of a leer.

Victoria smiles with the corner of her mouth. "I am aware."

Gabe raises his eyebrows. "Suppose she has one or two fewer now?"

"I wouldn't know anything about that." Victoria yawns. "Ask me no questions."

"Don't you want to know what the Jarl and I talked about?"

"Do I need to? I suppose she asked you to fetch something and you accepted. Pretending that it was all the same to you, no doubt. Like you don't live for the adventure. The Jarl likes herself some relics and specimens, you like yourself a barrow. Not a stretch, that guess."

Gabe tips his glass to his mouth, letting the last few drops slide down to his tongue. "She wanted a book she'd heard tell of. A monograph on dragon physique. Something. I leafed through it. Don't know why she cares. Fucking nuisances. Lotta bones."

"And I suppose she rewarded you appropriately and that is why you're so generously going to order me more mead?"

Gabe rolls his eyes and signals to Indret. "You haven't had enough?" he asks, looking at Victoria's lazy sprawl and hooded eyes. "Fancy a thief passed out drunk. You'd never live it down if someone cut your purse in that state."

Victoria drinks straight from the new bottle. "None of your business and I'll thank you not to mention my profession here."

"Pardon me." Gabe cuts a wedge of cheese off the wheel and offers it to Victoria. "Regardless, I have not reported to the Jarl yet."

Victoria makes a sour face. "Drinking before work. I know that about you as well."

Gabe grins. "What? I only just arrived. The entire palace is asleep. Right now, the only company I'll find there are the guards, and let me tell you, you'll never meet a more boring bunch."

"You're going to regret not sleeping," Victoria tells him. "She goes down to the throne room early."

"You know an awful lot about her habits, Victoria," Gabe says with a leer. "Professional curiosity?"

Victoria sniffs. Gabe assesses his strategy from here. He could go for subtle or direct. He follows the threads of conversation in his head for a split second and sets his chips down. "I haven't hired a room. Don't suppose you'll share yours?"

Victoria wrinkles her nose, taking in the state of him, but her eyes pause on his face and go dark. "Order a bath first."

Gabe drops his armor in a corner of Victoria's room, reveling in the expansion of his ribcage with only a tunic on, while Victoria lies on the bed and watches him from beneath the dark fringe of her hair.

Gabe has to pay good coin for Indret to draw him a hot bath in the middle of the night, but it’s worth it when he strips and lowers himself into the steaming tub. The water stings, like he’s being cleaned with sharp pincers, but slowly the ache dulls and Gabe lets his eyes slide shut.

“Wash your hair, too,” Victoria suggests. “And your face. Your face really needs it.”

Gabe takes a deep breath and slides down under the water, shaking his hair out and giving his face a quick scrub. He gasps when he surfaces. “All right. Am I clean enough for you, darling?”

Victoria hums. “You could use more soap.”

“Of course,” Gabe mutters and grabs the soap bar. It smells like creamy milk and honey when he gets it wet, and he secretly likes it enough to lather up without further complaint.

“Here,” comes Victoria’s voice from up close. Gabe blinks water out of his eyes and looks up at her, dressed only in a short, worn chemise and nothing underneath it. He wants to touch. “I’ll help you rinse. Close your eyes.”

Gabe closes his eyes and tips his head up, and Victoria places a cool hand over his eyes, shielding it from the stream of warm water she pours over his head.

“Get on your knees, now,” she says in a measured voice, and as Gabe does as she says, he wonders what he'd smell if his nose weren't full of the milk and honey smell of the soap and the hot scent of the water.

Victoria carefully pours the water all down his back, and then lets Gabe get up and rinse his legs. Gabe wipes his eyes dry with a rag and blinks at her, not a hair out of place and not a droplet of water on her chemise.

He has to change that, so he puts his wet hands over her breasts, dampening the cloth until it clings and he can see her dark nipples through it. “Gorgeous, baby.”

“Fucker,” Victoria says coolly, and pulls him forward until they collapse on the bed, and then his fingers are in her and her hand is on him, and everything is a blur until morning.

When Gabe wakes, his head aching, but it's not the mead, only tiredness and the bright sunlight. He hates the sun and the inn and whoever forgot to close the shutters, be it Indret or Victoria. Truly, he would not have put it past Victoria to have opened the shutters in the middle of the night, except Victoria fell into a dead sleep only minutes after he brought her off, and she must still be asleep now next to him.

Gabe reaches over to the other side of the bed, groping around the sheets with a limp hand. Victoria's gone. He sits bolt upright, jaw clenched and heart knocking loudly in his chest, and stares at his gear in the corner.

He's about to crawl out of bed, headache or no, and examine his possessions for completeness when Victoria, dressed in trousers and a tunic and only wrappings around her feet, slips into the room.

"I agreed we'd set our jobs aside," she says, taking in Gabe's expression. "I took nothing of yours."

She sounds annoyed and Gabe gives her the best disarming smile he can while his heartbeat tries to quiet down. "Just habit. Sorry."

"I'll bet you are." Victoria sits down on the bed and eyes her boots with distaste. "Taking a few days off really makes it hard to get back on the road."

"Do you have to?" Gabe falls back onto the pillow with a sigh. "I have so many tricks you haven't seen."

Victoria sighs and pulls her boots on. "I doubt it."

Gabe contemplates getting offended or offering to prove his claim, but in the end hums in agreement. "Well, we could sleep. Or eat."

Victoria's lips twist in a scowl. "We can't order a meal up here. I tried. You'll have to get up, brave knight."

"I perceive mockery in thy words, fairest," Gabe says with a groan and sits up. "Fuck."

Victoria straps on her armor and arranges her cowl around her neck. Gabe has no idea where her dagger is stashed. He's only seen it when it was already at his throat. Last night, when she was slicing off wedges of cheese with it, was quite the aberration. "I'll be downstairs eating. Tag along if you want. Don't steal my shit, or I will hunt you down."

"Never." Gabe watches her leave and then springs out of bed and for his filthy clothing. He's going to have to figure that out before the road takes him elsewhere. The filth situation is a drawback of his way of life.

His armor is heavy and tough, and he feels exactly as Victoria looked when she eyed her dusty boots. It's a recurring feeling after weeks out on quests and errands. When he sets out again, he'll love the protection his armor grants him from the fiercest opponents, its promise of lasting life and a carefree walk through this strange country. But when he strips it off in a city, he finds he's not quick to put it back on.

Still, the Jarl is the Jarl and he must present his best side to her. So he picks up the chest piece, spits on his fist and gives the side splattered with mud a quick polish, and pulls it on. His gauntlets and his boots go on too, but certainly not his helmet. He must, after all, present his best side, even if his best side was wet when he slept on it.

Gabe prides himself on being able to figure out the time of day based entirely on the number of people in any given inn's dining hall, and today his instincts tell him mid-morning, around ten a.m. It's fairly empty again, mostly the same drunks and different maids, but there are a few relaxed business dealings going on in corners around the room, an adventurer or two poring over maps with forkfuls of venison frozen halfway to their mouths, and Victoria hunched over a bowl of stew, her hair around her face.

Gabe orders a pint of ale and a dish of tomato soup and sits across from her. "Don't make me drag it out of you, doll."

Victoria glares. Gabe pushes the ale towards her and she takes two swallows from the bottle.

"Job gone wrong? Payment lost?" Gabe probes. "Spill, Victoria."

Victoria heaves a deep sigh. "Why do you fucking care? You're collecting your reward. It'll be months before you're back on the road."

"What?" Gabe asks, lost. "I'm at loose ends, you know. I'll need something to do. There's no way I'm staying here for months."

Victoria rolls her eyes. “This isn’t the first little favor you’ve done for the Jarl, is it?”

“I’ve done a few little favors. This was a big one. Do you know how many of those fucking Dwemer automatons I had to dispatch before I got to the book? And then it turned out it was in a crypt fifty miles away."

Victoria waves her hand like she's physically brushing Gabe's words aside. Gabe can practically see them crashing to the floor. “Do you know that a thane of Whiterun has recently passed away?”

"How would I know that? And what does it matter?"

Victoria shakes her head. "Go to Dragonsreach, Gabe. Talk to her. Find me if I'm wrong."

Gabe keeps glancing at her as he finishes his stew, but Victoria keeps her eyes down and a curtain of hair over them, and there's no further information to be gleaned from her.

The sunlight hits him full in the face when he steps outside. Whiterun is _nice_ in broad daylight. Gabe hasn't got a snake's golden tongue, but he's read his share of books, and nice is the perfect word for it, he thinks. It's open and light, easy to breathe in after picking his way through crumbling ruins.

There's a wide, paved road leading from the city gate to the Bannered Mare, and a square in front of the inn, clean shops selling any kind of wares. Everyone is moderately clean and well-spoken. Almost friendly.

Gabe doesn't go down to the shops, as his heavy bags are still in Victoria's room, but hangs to the right and ascends the stone stairs to the tree Gildengreen, walks under its fragrant pink blossoms past the temple and the nobles' houses, and takes a deep breath, looking up at the high white stairs that will take him to Dragonsreach, the palace of the Jarl.

He runs up the stairs on that single breath, and before he knows it he's standing before the heavy wooden doors of the palace, barely winded. The guards let him in without a second glance.

The air in Dragonsreach is its own special thing, fresh mountain air mixed with the emanations from the wooden walls and beams, smoke from the oil lamps and the fire, the rich scent of the repast laid out at the table.

Gabe walks forward to the end of the hall where the Jarl sits, nodding to the guards and warriors he knows and giving big smiles to the ones he doesn't. There's something happening in the mage's quarters, but, in Gabe's limited experience, it's better not to know.

One of the warriors at the table catches his eye. He's new, and he's short, and he's sad -- or, at least, somewhere off in his head. Given these factors, it's a wonder he's still alive, and alive enough to sit at the table of the Jarl of Whiterun Hold.

"Come," the Jarl says with a smile, breaking Gabe out of his contemplation. "You have returned! Did you have any success?"

Gabe bows and meets her eyes. The Jarl of Whiterun, Alicia the Grappler. She is beautiful and she's got a shiny sword at her belt, dark eyes, a wide smile, and neatly dressed dark hair, and she studies draconic anatomy. Gabe could stay a long time in her company, in theory, if he were the kind of man who'd stick around a palace.

"I brought you the book you asked for," Gabe tells her, fishing around in his armor. "Here."

The book's filthy because Gabe got it off a draugr in a crypt, but the Jarl doesn't hesitate to touch it. She runs her hand over the cover -- Gabe's glad he at least wiped off the bone meal -- and opens it to the first page, devouring the title with her eyes.

Gabe's going to be rewarded so hard.

"Thank you," she says, sounding almost like a little girl with how happy she is. "You've been a good friend to this court. I fear this errand was far beneath you, but I am truly grateful."

"Cool," Gabe says, with something in the pit of his stomach that feels oddly like embarrassment. "I'm glad you like it."

The Jarl smiles toothily at him. "I love it. Gabriel, I have rewards for you if you will accept."

Gabe grins back. "What kind of rewards?"

What he secretly loves about her -- even though he tries not to love people in his line of work -- is that she'll never turn red at his implications, but flash her smile slightly wider for a second and carry on talking, serene. It's no different now. She says, "A thane of my court has recently passed away, and there is no one who wishes to take his place. I would give it to you."

Gabe keeps smiling, because surely he misheard. Victoria will never let him live this down. "A thane."

The Jarl nods. "Everyone in my city knows you. You're well-liked. And you've been a friend to me."

Gabe flashes his teeth and refuses to investigate a strange tendril of feeling that's curling its way through him at her words. A thane. He doesn't need a title to do as he wishes in Whiterun, but it would mean a place to stay. A place to return to.

Something in her expression softens, and she continues, "It's a ceremonial position, mainly, but you can set up residence here if you wish. Or carry on as you are. I know you long for adventure."

The conversation in the hall behind him is as calm and measured as before, which means that this is a surprise to no one, and that what Gabe chooses has no consequence for them. Gabe ticks off his thoughts fast as he can.

No one would offer this to him. The person he is in this city would never want it, because he's here to sell off his loot, sharpen his sword, and take off when there's no more ale to be drunk and no more deals to conduct, and the person he is other places would never want it because he's above kings and queens and courts. He lives nowhere and likes it that way, so how could she offer him thanedom and a residence here?

But Gabe's philosophy is that there's no harm in taking anything, unless it's booby-trapped, and he's pretty sure there's no tripwire attached to this title. He's good at disabling those anyway. He nods.

"Thank you. I accept." When he's offered something, he takes it, and that's that. No need to break a principle.

Alicia smiles like she's genuinely pleased. "I'm so glad. You can talk to my steward and arrange everything."

There's someone else waiting behind Gabe, and no matter how pleased the Jarl is to speak to Gabe, her eyes focus away from his face in the span of a moment -- and just like that, he's dismissed. Okay. He can talk to the steward. Gabe didn't see him the last time he was in Whiterun anyway, and he's always got a lot of stories to tell.

This time Mikey's all business, though. Gabe gets the feeling that thaning somebody, or whatever they call it, is a paperwork-heavy affair, and Mikey's never struck him as someone who liked paperwork. Mikey sits Gabe down at the edge of the long dining table, ignoring the idly curious looks of the armored, bored warriors, and hauls out a ledger from a side room.

"Saporta," Mikey mouths as he writes down Gabe's information. "Gabriel."

"You need my lineage or anything?" Gabe asks, grinning at a warrior in particularly form-fitting Elven armor and long dark tresses spilling out from under her helmet until she rolls her eyes and turns away to talk to the short warrior with the sad eyes.

Mikey waves his hand, dismissing the question without a word. "Are you going to buy a house?"

Gabe's eyes snap to Mikey again. Mikey's looking at him with a slightly impatient expression, and Gabe realizes that was a yes or no question about a house purchase.

"Well, yeah, but --"

"We've got like one free right now. Five thousand septims. Want it?"

Gabe drops his hand into his pocket and feels the heft of his purse. "Yeah, but shouldn't I see it first or something? You just have the one house?"

Mikey nods. "One. Could be snapped up at any moment."

Gabe's been sold horses like this and it never led to anything good, but Mikey's only impatient, not trying to pull wool over his eyes, and Gabe's got a good feeling about this. "Sure. Sure, fine."

"Great," says Mikey with a trace amount of excitement and wiggles his fingers at Gabe. Gabe hands over his purse. "It's another eighteen hundred to furnish. You want?"

"Furnish?"

Mikey sighs. "Do you want it with cobwebs or with furniture?"

"Oh. Furniture."

"Great!" Mikey snaps the ledger shut and suddenly grins at him. "Go take a walk or hang out here for a bit and I'll make the arrangements."

Gabe pockets his purse and stands up. "All right, then, thanks."

"No problem. Here's your key." Mikey picks up the ledger -- it looks like it's thicker than he is -- and says, as Gabe turns towards the doors, "Your housecarl should be waiting there for you, but if he's not, come back and let me know and I'll track him down." That's an obvious lie. Mikey himself can rarely be tracked down for extra work.

"My what?" Gabe asks, but Mikey's already disappeared into the side room. 

Gabe looks around the hall, but everyone's keeping up the pretense that Gabe and Mikey were conducting entirely private business, and no one's leaping to explain anything to him. Fine, then.

Gabe returns to Victoria's room at the Bannered Mare. Victoria left it locked, but picking it open is only a matter of seconds for Gabe. This inn really needs better locks.

He grabs his bag of loot from the corner where he left all his things piled the night before. The maid, who clearly stopped by to haul away the tub and to make the bed, did not touch Gabe's things; even the pretty trinkets he's collected over the past few weeks are still where he left them.

By the time he sorts through the things that'll fetch him a fair price and the things that'll only pay for a drink or two and steps outside, it's late afternoon, and there's a breath of fresh wind cutting through the built-up heat of an unusually warm spring day. It's almost a pity to spend the day making rounds at the shops, but it's necessary. 

Gabe strolls around the market and through every shop and makes a good profit selling off everything he's found, bought, and looted over the past few weeks. His last stop is Warmaiden's, where Adrianne in her blacksmith's apron coaxes life out of the forge and into all manner of sharp gleaming things. 

His sword sharpened, Gabe takes the long way round to the inn -- there's dinner he could have, there are the rest of his things in Victoria's room, but he finds himself dawdling in the square in front of it, trying to make out in the failing light if there are still people working on Breezehome. His house. But everyone on the road is walking past it, and the house itself is still, though its windows are lit.

Gabe walks toward those lit windows, exchanging perfunctory hellos with the people in his way, and unlocks the door of the house with the key Mikey had given him.

The first thing he registers is warmth, permeating even through the night-chilled steel of his armor, and the mild golden heat of the hearth like a gentle hand on his cheek.

The front room is small as he remembered when he broke into it on his last visit.It feels even smaller now that there are cupboards lining the walls and a table at the back of the room. There's food, too, and plates and ale on the shelves.

Gabe checks each cupboard methodically, and they are full of things that are most useful in the line of work that is running a house, not so much slaying the undead. Well, he supposes he has use for it now. 

He checks out the little door at the back of the room. There's that green-glowing table -- the alchemy lab, which makes Gabe grin a bit -- and some bookshelves, and a chest. No bed here, though, which means it must be up the stairs from the hall, under the gabled roof.

The bedroom is where Gabe decided it must be, and there is also a man there. The man from Dragonsreach, the one with the sad eyes.

"Hello," Gabe tries, kicking off his boots into a corner.

"Hey," says the man. "This is actually my bedroom, Thane?" He says it as though it is a question.

"Oh," says Gabe and picks up his boots.

"I mean, we can switch, it's just that the other one is bigger, Thane."

Gabe looks around the little room. A nook, really: just a single bed and an end table and not much else. There's a small chest at the foot of the bed and a black greatsword balanced on top of it, and the man, and there's very little space for anything else.

"Sorry," Gabe says. "Who are you?"

"Peter," says the man. "Pete. I'm your housecarl. I heard Mikey tell you about me."

Everything suddenly makes sense. Gabe grins. "You're here to serve."

"Within reason," Pete says dryly. "I'm mostly here to fight, as I understand that's how you spend the bulk of your time."

Gabe waves his hand. "I try not to tie myself down to any single paradigm. So where's the other bedroom?"

Pete stares at him like he's an idiot. Gabe stares back, then turns around and sees the door on the other side of the landing.

He marches to it, boots in hand, and takes in the generously-sized bed with a green bedspread and a lovely large chest at its foot. The chest is empty, so he puts his healing potions inside, closes it, and puts his boots down next to it. The he launches himself at the bed.

The mattress is _soft_ ; feather-down by the feel of it. Gabe hasn't lain on feather-down in years, and he was rather preoccupied at the time. He can't wait to take his clothes off and dive under the covers.

Pete giggles softly and Gabe sits up, the spell broken. "What?"

"Nothing, I've just never seen..." Pete nods at Gabe, and Gabe grins, getting it.

"Whatever. I'm too tired to take my armor off. Are you supposed to help me take it off? What's the scope of your duties, generally?"

Pete sits down at the table in a corner and bites into a sweet roll. Gabe suddenly really wants one too. "No undressing unless we're about to have fun, and that's definitely not within the scope of my duties. I'll slay a dragon for you, though."

Gabe makes a face. Dragons are fucking annoying. "Okay, that's useful. Though I don't know if I'll ever leave this bed again." 

Pete makes a face too, but it's more subtle than what Gabe imagines his dragon face is, and he doesn't quite understand what it means. He finds he doesn't want to see much more of that expression. "What about drinking, will you drink with me?"

"Sure," Pete says finally. "If you're buying."

They end up at the same corner table at the Bannered Mare that Gabe shared with Victoria the night before. Gabe buys with the proceeds from the day's selling, and Pete soaks up ale after ale with cheese and bread, pretending to listen to Gabe's tales of valor.

"Once I sliced off the head of a giant snake and it spoke to me," says Gabe, just to test if Pete's listening.

"Bullshit," says Pete.

"It told me to travel the world."

"You sure it wasn't skooma? Thane," Pete adds like an asshole, as though Gabe would ever get himself hooked on skooma.

"I need my hands to be steady." Gabe takes a long gulp of ale. "Moon sugar is as far as I'll go. I will have you know it was a real vision."

"Right." Pete pauses and Gabe thinks he might be about to change the subject, but the pause stretches. Pete taps his foot; Gabe can feel it in the slight vibration of the floorboards. Pete's small and wears some of the lightest armor Gabe's seen around, but he makes his presence known. Right now he's tense, coiled up. Gabe wouldn't turn his back if he sensed a presence like that in a room.

"How steady do you need your hands to be, though?"

Gabe frowns. "What?"

Pete gestures at him. "You swing your sword, you run through the spray of blood. Where's the accuracy required?"

Gabe raises an eyebrow. "It's like you're trying to be insulting in the least subtle way possible."

Pete actually looks angry at that, but then he slumps over, his body still taut. "Sorry my insults aren't up to par, Thane."

Gabe taps his foot, mirroring Pete on a barely conscious level. "You want a fight or something? There's gotta be an easier way to get that. Half the clientele here will punch the living daylights out of you, no fancy fight-picking maneuvers required."

Pete raises his head off his folded arms. "Usually insulting their sword technique works just fine."

"Well, I'm pretty secure in my sword technique," Gabe replies with an automatic leer while he zeroes in on Pete's face -- completely scarless, nose straight and clearly never broken. That's a brawler?

"What are you looking at?" Pete asks, annoyed.

"Also a good way to start a fight," Gabe drawls, starting to grin. "You wanna?"

Pete's shoulders rise unsteadily like he's drawing in a breath and it's not coming easy. "Fine, all right," he finally says. "Take your damn gauntlets off."

Gabe unbuckles his gauntlets and throws them on the floor. "I can take my armor off too," he offers. "Hardly fair, my steel against your leather."

Pete's peeling off his bracers, but he looks up at that with a humorless grin. "We're not fighting to the death."

Gabe stands up and stretches to crack his back. "First blood?"

"That's for teenagers."

Gabe shrugs. “Fine.”

Gabe figures he should probably feel weird about hitting his servant, but he’s never had a servant before and there’s no voice inside him telling him to go easy on Pete, not when everything about Pete says the opposite.

Pete gets in a good blow from an angle Gabe's not used to, because he's never had an opponent that short, and Gabe barks out a startled laugh even as his head snaps back at the cracklingly painful blow to his jaw.

Gabe hits back fast, though, nailing Pete hard in the shoulder, Pete stumbling back against a pillar to the sound of alarmed and giddy voices around them. Gabe punches Pete's cheek, then, before Pete has a chance to catch his breath, and steps back so Pete misses the lunge forward and falls to his knees. The sight of him catches Gabe in the gut.

"Enough, maybe?" Gabe asks lightly, covering for the strange feeling in his stomach. His jaw stings and he's strangely out of breath, his heartbeat skipping in his throat and his lungs hurting. "We don't even have money riding on this."

Pete looks up from the floor, eyes dark and strange. "This is a pathetic fight."

"Yeah," Gabe says, keeping his distance. "I don't really brawl for no reason. You got something I want? Then we'll talk."

Pete heaves a sigh and gets up, settling heavily on the bench. There's a bruise blooming on his cheek, dark from Gabe's fist. Judging by the sting in Gabe's jaw, Gabe's going to have a matching shiner.

Gabe silently offers Pete the last ale, glaring around the room to make the busybodies stop gawking.

Pete drinks in silence, until he says, "I noticed your weapons earlier."

Gabe nods.

There's an unobtrusive shadow near the door that slowly moves to the stairway leading up the rooms. Gabe knows the shadow is Victoria, and shit, she must be upset if he's noticing anything at all.

Whatever. "And what have you got to say about my weapons?"

"You've got quite a reputation," Pete says, slanting his eyes to the side. His fingers twitch and his hand stays on the table with effort. It must hurt.

"Indeed I do." Gabe sets down his mug and looks at Pete's eyes until a slight shudder goes through Pete and he looks back up. "What about 'em?"

"They're not enchanted," Pete explains.

Gabe makes a face. "Do they need to be?"

Pete shrugs one shoulder and hisses in pain, because that was the shoulder Gabe slammed him in, the one that cracked against a beam with an ugly noise. "You seem like a man who likes things just so."

Gabe laughs. "I have a tiny little house in a town one step up from a village and a wardrobe drenched in mud. And I only acquired one of these things today. Where'd you get that idea?"

"Just a feeling." Pete sits quietly for a minute, rolling his shoulder and wincing. "More ale?"

Gabe pushes a bottle at him silently.

"Anyway, you should have enchanted weapons. Do you even have any idea what kind of shit is out there?"

Gabe laughs. "Yeah, I have an idea."

"So we'll go to Dragonsreach, get you something with a little more power," Pete says decisively. "As I'm sworn to protect you."

The words pull at something inside Gabe's chest, uncomfortable and hot. "I don't need a fucking housecarl, Pete. I don't even need to be a thane. It's a ceremonial position that I only took for a house, and your position is ceremonial too. You can go do whatever it is you were doing before I showed up."

"Gerard will let me use his enchanter," Pete says, ignoring Gabe's words, even though Gabe can see that they stung Pete somehow.

Still, it's distracting enough that Gabe has to ask. "Gerard the court mage?"

"I don't know what he's doing in Whiterun," says Pete like he's thinking over every word. "Don't know what you're doing in Whiterun either. This town is lovely but small, and bursting like an overstuffed purse with people who need a place much bigger." He takes a swig from his bottle and continues in a slow, dreamy voice. "They all think that the view of the palace is enough to remember how big the world is, but the truth is, they forget who they are here. I used wander to the back of Dragonsreach a lot. There's an open hall there, where they trapped dragons. It looks out onto the north. All you can see is mountains. I'd catch people there sometimes, standing on the ledge like in a dream. And you know what? Sometimes I'd catch myself standing there too."

Gabe taps his fingers on the table. There's a puddle of ale, half-soaked into the wood, and he dips his fingertips into it, spreads it around until it's in the vague shape of Skyrim. "Sounds like Whiterun's a bit small for you, not me."

Pete grimaces. "I don't know how I ended up here. Travel got a bit much for me, and now I'm stuck here." Then Pete shakes out his shoulders, wincing again when he moves the injured one, and sits up straight. "I'll take you to Dragonsreach tomorrow and we'll talk to Gerard."

Gabe and Pete walk out of the Bannered Mare entirely too sober for the quantities of gold Gabe had to pay the barmaid for the ale. It's late, dark, but not so late that the windows of the houses they pass on the way to Breezehome aren't still lit up with warm light. There are faint voices coming from the inside.

His own house is dark, because Pete had insisted on putting out the lamps before they left, so Pete pushes Gabe to the side when they cross the threshold and walks through the house, somehow navigating perfectly in the dark to the nearest lamp. When it lights, it casts a soft golden glow on everything, flicking shivering shadows onto the walls. It lights up the side of Pete's face, too, the dark hollows of his eyes and the sad set of his mouth. Gabe takes a stumbling step towards him, not even thinking why, and Pete walks to meet him at the staircase.

"Careful," Pete murmurs, holding Gabe's elbow as they both walk up to the bedrooms. "To the right now, Thane, there you go."

Pete stands in the doorway, holding the lamp up and out so Gabe has enough light to undress. He kicks off his boots and takes off his chest piece, and then he's standing in front of Pete in breeches and a chemise, Pete looking at him solemnly like looking at Gabe is his duty.

"I usually don't go to bed until later," says Gabe just to say something.

"That's a lie, adventurer," Pete says quietly. "How would you travel in the dark?"

Gabe presses his lips together and pulls off his chemise. "My legs can run in the dark as well as in the daylight."

"Uh-huh." The lamp swings. Gabe is maybe drunker than he thought, because with the tilting of the light it feels like the world is swinging. He has to sit down to pull off his breeches. Pete is still standing there. "You never trip over rocks, branches, I suppose?"

Gabe shifts up on the bed and crawls under the covers, still feeling oddly naked and off-kilter. "The trails are well-swept, I will have you know."

Pete suddenly giggles. He sets the lamp on the table and bends down to pick up the pieces of Gabe's armor that Gabe was too uncomfortable to tidy up himself. "Sure, that sounds like the country I know."

Gabe yawns on a laugh. "The bears and wolves never approach in the dark either. They're entirely too well-mannered for that."

Pete shifts the armor around in his arms so he can pick up the lamp in his left hand. When he does, the world swings again. "Good night."

Gabe thinks he replies to that, but perhaps he doesn't, because with Pete exits the light, and Gabe drops off, heavy, like he hasn't slept in months.

Gabe wakes because the window in the gabled roof faces full east and he gets an unwelcome eyeful of sun when it rises high enough. That's all right, he supposes, because it really is high. It must not be dawn, not by a long shot.

His armor is sitting polished on top of the chest at the foot of his bed, but Gabe checks his wardrobe instead. He has a feeling.

Indeed, his clothes are hung up neatly, and there's a new-looking pair of soft shoes Gabe doesn't remember owning. He tries them on and they fit. He slips them off again, pulls on a pair of breeches and a doublet, and puts the shoes back on.

"Pete?" he yells.

There's silence downstairs. Gabe looks around. There's a wash basin on the table, and he splashes his face with some water, feeling instantly more awake.

It's quiet in Pete's room, the bed made, only Pete's clothes an indication that someone had stayed there. Downstairs, there's a meal on the table, which Gabe scarfs down with enthusiasm, but also no Pete.

Gabe shrugs. Okay. If Pete's busy, he's busy. There isn't anything Gabe needs from him now -- or at all. In fact, it's pretty weird to have someone there constantly, pacing back and forth in a house as small as Breezehome. And Gabe's low on potions anyway, and he's got a satchel of herbs and twigs and oddments that just beg to be made into something transcendent.

The apothecary table in the little room at the back of the house isn't much, but it's equipped with everything Gabe needs to brew for himself as well as for any apothecary with funds to burn, and he gets lost in potion-making for a while, washed in the green glow of the table, soothed by the quiet bubbling of the alchemical processes.

Pete is strange. He does things for Gabe, like preparing his breakfast and waking early to clean his armor, but he's a tangle of deferential and asshole that Gabe has no idea what to do with aside from puzzle over it. People, in his experience, are usually more straightforward than that.

He's in the middle of pondering what Pete's fulcrum might be when the door creaks.

"Thane?" Pete calls from the front of the house.

Gabe stoppers the last bottle and sweeps his ingredients carefully into the satchel. "In here," he calls to Pete. He'll leave the satchel here, now that he has a place to put it, and leave the potions here too, since he's not going to be on the move for a while.

Pete comes in. He's wearing his leather guard's armor again. Gabe wonders what he looks like in normal clothes. Truth be told, Gabe sometimes forgets how he himself looks in normal clothes. There are no mirrors here in this house. He doesn't know what he looks like now, if he looks soft, or if his life is etched into him like scars even wearing fabric instead of steel.

Pete looks at Gabe oddly, and Gabe quickly stops staring, turning back to the satchel to make sure it's firmly buckled closed. "I see you found breakfast."

Gabe nods. "Thanks. I found the armor too. And the basin. You take housecarling seriously, huh?"

"It's my job." Pete throws a look at the potions but doesn't say anything about them. "Ready to go to the palace?"

Gabe makes a face, but trudges to the weapons racks by the front door to get his sword. "I still don't see why I need my sword to, like, breathe fire."

"It doesn't _breathe_ fire," Pete says patiently, herding him out the door.

"It may as well," Gabe says, locking the door behind him and following Pete up the road to the stairs to the upper district of Whiterun. "My sword bites like a snake, and you want to make it into something it's not. Into, I don't know. A dragon."

"And biting like a snake is perfectly normal, I suppose?" Pete throws over his shoulder.

Gabe doesn't reply. He turns his face up to the sky and listens to the soft sound of his feet hitting road dust.

"You never get to hear that on the road," Pete says quietly from off to the side.

Gabe shivers, startled. Pete throws him a smile that actually looks real. Pete's mouth is full of big white teeth. It looks uncomfortable but somehow fitting. "Your shoes. I've seen your boots. I don't know how you walk in armor that heavy. You must scare away all the game."

"I'm no hunter." Gabe shrugs. "And whoever I scare away, I'm glad for it."

"You can't sneak up on anyone either."

"I'm not that subtle a guy."

"Guess not."

They pass under the Gildergreen and cross the bridge, the stairs to the palace shining white before them. Gabe's quiet for a moment, contemplating the long walk up. "You don't strike me as a subtle guy yourself."

"I had to learn."

"Who are you?" Gabe asks. "You talk like you have a dark mysterious past, but most of the people I meet who talk like that are only waiting for someone to ask them their secrets."

Pete's lips twist. "I used to be like you, now I live here. It's no matter. I have no fame, no quests worthy of writing songs about. I used to be on the road, looking for precious things, and now I am not."

"You gave it up. Because you wanted to."

They're standing in front of the doors now, the wind whipping around them, spring-like and cold despite the warm sun, and the guard throws them a suspicious look until she recognizes Pete. Pete's allowed to loiter, apparently.

"Yeah, I gave it up." Pete turns away from Gabe, looking out onto the country lying far below the palace. "Career change. It happens."

The clouds racing across the sky, spurred on by the wind, make the landscape shift and flicker like the lamp Pete carried last night. "Well," Gabe says. "I applaud you for seeking something new. Show me how to enchant my sword, now. I'm seeking new things too, I suppose."

Dragonsreach Hall is emptier than Gabe is used to, and Gerard is not in the court mage's quarters. Pete shrugs when they get there. He looks more comfortable in the palace that he's looked anywhere else Gabe's seen him, walking through the hall and the quarters like he owns them.

"Gerard won't mind us using this. He never does." Pete rakes his eyes over the table that's so disorganized Gabe is getting hives just looking at it. "We're going to need a soul gem, and maybe some spares for when the charge runs out."

Gabe's been around for a long time and it's not like he doesn't know _anything_ about enchantments, but he's perhaps a bit fuzzy on the details. "Soul gems."

Pete picks up a large crystal and flicks it with his fingernail. "This one's full. It'll do. Leave, oh... a thousand on the table for Gerard, okay?"

Gabe dutifully opens his purse. "A bit steep, no?"

Pete shrugs. "We'll take a couple of these, too, so leave another thousand. That's in case you need to recharge the spell."

"This is exactly why I've never enchanted anything before," Gabe informs Pete. "It's expensive as shit and I'm just making ends meet."

"You are a very good looter," Pete says distractedly, "who just bought a house and a servant. Give me your sword."

Gabe pulls it out and sits down in Gerard's chair. "I did not _buy_ you."

"Of course not," Pete murmurs. "All right."

He leans over a blue-glowing table by the wall, next to the alchemical laboratory. "This is an Arcane Enchanter," Pete explains. The table glows a bit more brightly at his words, like it's saying hello. Gabe scoots his chair around so he can see everything better, the way the light washes everything out into white.

"You know how to do this?"

"A little bit." Pete bites his lip. "I know the fire enchantment."

He lays the sword across the table and positions the gem on one of the symbols engraved in the surface of the wood. Gabe can't see or hear anything happening, but he can see Pete's lips move and his brow furrow, and then the light flashes even more brightly and fades away.

"All right!" Pete exclaims when Gabe's still blinking away the patterns on the insides of his eyelids. "Enchanted sword."

The sword is glowing red around the edges. Gabe warily wraps his hand around the hilt. It's cold, but it still feels alive, more dangerous and unpredictable than before.

"It won't set aflame unless it strikes something," says Pete, leaning back against the table. "So don't worry."

"I'm not," Gabe says absently. He casts a look around to see he's in the clear and slices an arc through the air, his muscles singing with the practiced movement. It looks like a branch taken from a fire and swung around to write secrets in the air. Gabe doesn't know these secrets, though, because the one who filled the sword with them was Pete.

"Well." Gabe sheaths the sword and turns to face Pete. "And you did it all with some symbols and a gem."

Pete tosses the other two soul gems from one hand to the other. "They're really crystals. They're just called soul gems."

"Why?"

Pete looks at Gabe like he's dumb. Again. "Each one is filled with a soul."

"What, like... a human soul?"

"Don't try to tell me you've never killed a human."

"Just answer the question!" Gabe takes two steps towards Pete, stopping when Pete shrinks away from him. Gabe hadn't expected that. "Sorry."

Pete's lips twist. "No matter. None of these has a human soul in it. The one I used probably had a draugr's. Something that died long ago. These two..." Pete clinks them against each other. "I don't know. Maybe a couple of bears."

"I don't shoot game," says Gabe.

"You'd do it if it attacked you." Pete pushes away from the table. "Want me to show you the Great Porch?"

Gabe shrugs. He wants to kick something, because his stomach's knotted up with anger at something -- maybe Pete, but probably himself, for not understanding and for the anger. He might as well see the porch, the place that makes one wish to fly.

The guards let them through, not minding that they're wandering through the palace unchecked. Gabe knows somehow when the Great Porch is behind the next door, because the air blows cool through the fine cracks in the wood and there is a humming behind it that suggests a wildly free wind.

Pete enters through the door first, and then Gabe. The Great Porch sings, the weathered pillars acting like the strings of a lute. It's a great shaded hall with balconies lining its walls and a half-circle of a sun-drenched stone balcony at the end of it.

"Well," Gabe says finally.

Pete turns to look at him. "It's the heart of the palace. They lured dragons here and trapped them. You wouldn't think this was a prison, would you?"

Gabe turns around in a circle and stops when he gets dizzy looking at the spinning ceiling. "It does not feel like a prison."

"I don't think it should be one."

Pete's voice sounds odd, but then, everything about Pete is kind of odd, kind of sad, a little off. Gabe lets Pete's voice ricochet around in his head in hopes that he'll figure it out with enough time, and meanwhile he walks forward, step after step to the balcony.

In front of him is rolling land and mountains and sky and the same flickering shadows from the racing clouds.

"You see?" Pete murmurs next to him. "You just stand here, now, and you'll feel like you can't move."

"This can't be why everyone stays here." Gabe has to cough to clear his throat. He can see the mist rise off the peaks in the distance. "You can see all this and more when you're actually out there."

"You don't get it." Pete takes a step closer to the low wall in front of them. "It makes you want to do something stupid. Like you can just be... all of that."

"I do something stupid for a living," Gabe points out, finally shaking off his funk. "Pete, what the hell are you talking about? Get away from the damn wall."

Pete clearly wasn't expecting to hear that, because he looks startled and actually does as Gabe says. "What?"

"It's lunchtime," Gabe says firmly. "The view is real pretty, Pete, but I've seen mountains before and the sight of them makes me hungry. Come."

Pete shakes his head. "You have no poetry in you."

"I like living," says Gabe, and takes Pete's sleeve to make sure Pete follows. "There's poetry in that. Poetry in lunch. One time I wrote a song about eggplant."

"I suppose that's better than the songs about how Dark Elves are the worst," Pete muses, following Gabe through the palace and down the steps to the market. "I've never heard a song about vegetables."

"You can do lots of things with vegetables," says Gabe.

"Stew."

"Hash."

"Soup."

"Sex things."

Pete honks out a laugh. "Maybe _you_ can."

"It gets lonely on the road," Gabe says, barely keeping up his straight face and then cracking up. "Bannered Mare again?"

"Only game in town." Pete lets Gabe go through the door first, and his face looks deferential again, and it makes Gabe's stomach shudder unpleasantly.

The days go by fast. Gabe hadn't thought that he'd enjoy just staying at home and spend his days cleaning his gear, carefully honing his weapons and hammering improvements into his armor. It turns out there are things to fix up around the house, like installing blinds in his bedroom so he can sleep past midday if he feels like it, putting up a grate around the fireplace. He learns to look forward to traders coming through town, too, when they buy out the apothecary and the general goods store, and Gabe can come in and practice his rusty tongue, sell the potions he's crafted from his ever-dwindling supply of ingredients.

The ground becomes warm enough to grow life, too, and Gabe buys a rake and some seeds, laughing at himself a little for it. But there is good earth underneath his windows at the back of the house, and why not use it?

Life passes slow and fast at the same time, and Gabe barely feels that itch under his skin that always meant dissatisfaction. Pete, though, is another question. He does all the things he did when Gabe met him, cares for his armor and eats with him, but he's like something Gabe wouldn't want to turn his back on, like a trap triggered by a misstep, and Gabe has no idea where the tripwire is.

He doesn't know why he gives a shit, but he does. He has a hunch, too, that being cooped up with Gabe isn't helping, because no one could really handle that much of Gabe's presence anywhere Gabe's been. There's no question that Pete could use a day off.

Pete says no when Gabe offers.

"Why not?" Gabe asks, sincerely puzzled.

"Just no." They're outside, Gabe shaking earth off his hands. He's just planted some tomatoes. Pete presses at the damp edge of the bed with the toe of his boot.

"But..."

"There's nothing I'd do that I can't already do whenever," says Pete.

"Okay." Gabe thinks. And thinks. And the image of the sword pops into his head, bright and sparking. "Let's go give the Jarl a visit."

Gabe throws on his armor, gasping a little from how heavy it is. "Shit, shit, shit," he mutters while Pete snickers in the doorway. A month's lack of practice and he's completely out of shape. "I'll get some light armor, shut _up_."

"Sorry, Thane," Pete says dutifully, and Gabe flips him off and walks past him.

Alicia tells them that there's a bandit camp less than a day's walk away. 

"These have been absolutely brazen," she says with a curl of her lip. "They've already raided the Honningbrew Meadery, and there's hardly a visitor to our town in the past three weeks who hasn't been harassed by this bunch."

It's absolutely perfect, regardless of how small the bounty will be. It will keep him and Pete in ale and it might amuse Pete to get out of the city for a bit. "Consider it done, my lady," Gabe says, bowing and barely managing to unbend his back. He really needs some light armor. Bandits don't require anything more than that anyway, and he'll just have to... practice later. He supposes.

Pete's silent through the entire affair. Gabe is afraid he misjudged the situation, but when they get back to Breezehome, Pete pushes him on. "Get yourself outfitted," Pete says, his eyes hooded and unreadable. "You're not dying because you're too stubborn to get new armor."

"I was going, I was going," Gabe protests. "What, you're not coming?"

"I'm getting outfitted too. I'll meet you by the city gates when I'm ready."

Pete disappears inside the house before Gabe can nod yes, which is irritating and insolent, but also efficient. Adrianne is efficient also, and by the time Pete jogs down the road to the smithy, she's hammering out the last adjustments to some plain but sturdy leather armor. Gabe straps it on and hands over some coin, already focused on the next step.

"That works on you," Pete comments. He's got a helmet on, making him look stubborn as hell. He's not so different from the Pete Gabe's used to, but the helmet makes his face harder to read.

Gabe supposes he's got to trust him regardless. "You're not so bad yourself."

Pete looks a little silly with a sack strapped to his back and a greatsword that is barely smaller than he is, but Gabe has to admit that it suits him nonetheless.

"Do you know where we're going?" Gabe asks.

Pete frowns and starts walking. The city gate is heavy, and Pete has to push hard for it to open, but he gets it done without that much effort. "Sure. I've been there. It's half a day's walk, just about."

Gabe jogs to catch up to him, and they make their way down the winding descent from the city to the plain. "That'll put us there pretty late in the afternoon. Not the ideal time."

Pete nods. He looks focused. "True enough. But it beats sneaking up on them when they're drunk out of their minds and passed out towards morning."

"You fight fair?"

Pete shrugs. "Fair-ish."

"I'm interested in seeing you with your greatsword," Gabe says, putting a little suggestion in his voice even though he genuinely is interested. It's safer to laugh it off before anyone else does.

"As I said, Thane, that's not on my list of duties," Pete says dryly.

Gabe laughs and picks up the pace a little, vaguely aware of Pete doing the same behind him. Being outside, on a dusty road leading to the unknown, makes his blood thrum and his legs shake. The only way to work it out is to run, slow enough to keep up the pace for hours before needing rest, to observe everything around him. He notices the world so much better like this, the faint scent of pollen in the air carried through the plain on the cool wind together with campfire ash and the sound of mammoths grazing and rumbling somewhere to the north the young spring grass speckled with mountain flowers of all colors and dragon's tongue.

The howling of wolves not too far away makes him tense up and draw his sword from its sheath, and he looks around, quickly and efficiently, jogging backwards for a moment, because the wolves are bastards, their howls bright enough to echo off the ground and nearby hills, disguising their position. He's got enough scars and bruises from wolf bites in his life.

Pete sees the wolves first. All Gabe sees is the glare of the sun off Pete's blade, the arc it makes through the air, through the black blurs leaping at Pete, and the shiny, wet red dripping off the sword after. Fuck.

Pete exhales hard and steps away from the two bodies at his feet. "There." His voice is hoarse. "All safe."

"Wipe your blade," Gabe says faintly. "Good work," he adds, because _that_ is Pete's job. Not drinking with Gabe, not polishing his fucking boots. Killing for Gabe.

Pete gets down on one knee, looking at Gabe all the while, and drags the greatsword through a dense clump of grass. The bright fresh green streaks brown under the blade.

"You want me to skin them?" Pete asks, looking up at Gabe again. "Wolf pelts don't fetch much, but it's something."

"I don't... No." Gabe will kill wolves when it means saving his skin, and he'll wear leather when it means the same, but... "I don't do that."

"Good." Pete gets up, wiping his face with his sleeve. He doesn't sheathe his sword. "I may as well stay armed. Damn. The city can't push nature back. Why even bother?"

Gabe knows what Pete means, the way clearing up a safe space for travelers near cities seems to do good for no more than a few short weeks, and then Skyrim and its wildness encroaches on them again.

Gabe shrugs and brushes away the afterimage of Pete's arms gripping the sword, his shoulders moving, and starts to run. "It earns us a living," he throws over his shoulder.

If Pete replies, his answer is carried away by the wind before it ever reaches Gabe's ears.

They find the cave when the sun is still high up, though craning to the horizon. The cave's entrance is hidden by nothing more than some particularly tall grasses. They come up to Pete's shoulders, and Gabe turns to see how Pete would deal with them, if he'd look annoyed at having to forge his way through, and for a moment before Pete notices that Gabe is looking, Gabe gets to see Pete make an annoyed face and swat some particularly tall stalks out of his face. Then Pete sees that Gabe is watching and his face grows expressionless once more.

There is no sentry outside, which doesn't mean much here, perhaps only that this bandit party is not large -- which, in turn, means that Gabe will perhaps receive even less in the way of a bounty than he expected. On the other hand, it does signify an easy job.

There are barrels stacked haphazardly nearby. Pete watches stonily, his eyes skimming the grass-framed clearing and the rough wooden door marking the entrance to the lair, as Gabe systematically opens and goes through each barrel. 

"Well, Pete, there's some salt in here for cooking with."

"I'm not your chef," Pete says, "and you know you can buy that at the shop for barely any gold, right?"

Gabe grins down into the barrel and scoops up the salt piles. "I need to keep you in the style to which you have become accustomed."

"Do you always chitchat on the job?"

"When there's someone to chitchat with." There hasn't been anyone in a long time.

Pete makes a quiet noise that Gabe thinks might be understanding. Perhaps it's Gabe's own wishful thinking, though. Pete's right. They need to get the job done.

"So you're good at protecting me from wolves," Gabe says, easing open the wooden door and praying it won't creak too badly. It doesn't creak much. "I wonder how you'll do with humans."

"You don't even need to carry your own sword."

Gabe laughs and glances behind him to see Pete's face. Pete looks absolutely serious.

Gabe hums. "I think I will anyway."

"That's probably wise." Pete walks up to Gabe and slips inside the cave first. There's no sound, and Gabe follows.

The cave breathes mildew at them and the less pleasant varieties of mushroom.

"This is why I'll never lead a life of crime," Gabe mutters, and is gratified when Pete snorts quietly ahead.

They sneak down the winding passageway, which drops at a good thirty-degree slope. It gets cooler with each passing moment, and Gabe congratulates himself silently that he ditched his steel armor, which would be slick with condensation and cold around the collar by now. The leather is comfortable. It won't stand up to an attack as well as the steel, but he feels light on his feet. Like he doesn't need armor at all because nothing will touch him.

Gabe sees Pete stop before he hears the voices. Pete looks back and Gabe nods at him, and they proceed quietly, slowly, down, until they take the last bend in the corridor and see its mouth opening up into a large fire-lit cave. It seems to be a party of three, plenty easy to take out even if Gabe were on his own, and two of them are in plain sight, sitting at a table.

Gabe taps Pete on the shoulder and raises an eyebrow.

"I could just shoot them," Pete mouths, reaching over his shoulder to stroke an arrow in his quiver.

Gabe isn't a huge fan of archery, but he wants to see what Pete can do, so he nods an okay.

Pete sheaths his sword and swings his bow around, fitting an arrow to it in a blurred sequence of movements Gabe can barely track, and lets the arrow loose after just a moment of intense concentration. The bandit goes down with a yell and Pete lets out a quick breath and pulls back into the shadows.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Pete hisses at Gabe when Gabe sidesteps him and draws his sword.

Gabe shakes his head and takes the bandit that comes after them head-on, slicing into his neck with a crack he's long ceased to find sickening and an entirely new burst of hot flame. He steps back in shock as the bandit slumps to the ground and the smell of charred flesh and singed hair fills his nostrils. The fire dies quickly, but Gabe's still staring at it when he hears the footsteps of the third man, the leader who'd been hanging back, and he barely looks up in time to see Pete charge him, greatsword drawn, and cut into his armor with a screech of metal on metal.

The thug staggers but stays upright. He has a heavy, nasty-looking mace and a shield that he bludgeons Pete with before Gabe can warn him to look out. Pete falls to the ground and readies to strike when Gabe steps between them and pushes his sword into the bandit's heart, turning his face away from the burst of fire.

The bandit falls to the ground, the second lifeless body at their feet.

"Damn," Pete croaks, getting up and rifling through the leader's pockets. "That hurt."

"Are you all right?" Gabe asks mechanically, still staring at the charred hole in the leader's armor. "That fire. Shit."

"You'll get used to it."

"I don't know if I want to," Gabe mutters, going through the clothes of the other bandit.

"Hey," says Pete sharply. "That's one of the least nasty enchantments there is. And it helped you."

"Yeah, yeah," Gabe says, shaking it off. The bandit has a heavy coin purse on him, and, from the looks of it, Pete found an even bigger one on the leader.

Pete moves on to the third body quickly while Gabe does a fast search of the room. Nothing too interesting here, some junky weapons he can sell for a bit of coin, a few healing potions, some bread.

"You want?" he asks Pete, biting into the loaf and saving the rest of it at him. "It's only a little stale," he adds through a mouthful of bread. "Delicious."

Pete sighs but takes the rest of the loaf and tears into it, white teeth flashing. "We really should have stopped for food."

Gabe pokes at the cooking pot over the fire. "I don't know if I'd trust these guys' cookery, but there seems to be some stew here."

"Give it here," Pete says immediately, reaching for the pot, and Gabe grins and sets it on the table, yanking his hands away and blowing on it when the heat is too much to bear.

Pete shakes his head and dips the bread in the stew, eating quickly. Gabe doesn't have much of an appetite, not with the bodies lying around and the smell of charred meat, not to mention the dubious cleanliness of the bowls on the table, so he just watches Pete dig in and eats an apple from the provisions Pete packed. It's not boring at all, sitting together, looking at Pete's sloping shoulders, his arm moving from the pot to his mouth.

The sun is dipping low by the time they walk outside with loot piled on their backs. By the look on Pete's face, he's doing the same calculation Gabe is.

"It'll be past midnight by the time we get back."

Gabe winces. "You don't want to spend the night there with the bodies."

Pete makes a face to rival Gabe's for sure. Gabe laughs and inclines his head in the direction of Whiterun. Walking at night is no matter, and the sky will light the way.

They walk quietly. Pete throws Gabe another apple when Gabe's stomach growls loudly around sunset, but that's as far as they go to openly acknowledge each other's company. What Pete thinks of Gabe is a mystery, and Gabe's not sure that his own thoughts are any clearer to him.

The sky does light the way, the plain and the snow-covered mountains reflecting the light of the moon and the aurora like a mirror, thickening the shadows and bringing out the paleness of the soft dirt road. It's a beautiful night, if a cold one, fireflies and moths glowing gently, all the aromas of the fields mingling together in one gorgeous smell. It's almost a pity that the road leads home. And that... that's a thought Gabe didn't expect.

Gabe slows down, making his strides just a bit shorter to fall in line with Pete, and now he can hear both of their footsteps gently scuffing in the soft dust, almost in sync, and the sharp smell of Pete's sweat becomes another note in the perfume of the night. Pete doesn't say anything to that, but Gabe catches him looking, and it feels like an odd sort of reward.

The silence is companionable at first, but it slowly starts to thicken, coagulating into clots of thought in Gabe's mind. Pete can't just be a sword the Jarl pawned off onto Gabe to fulfill her ceremonial obligations; no city guard would know stealth the way Pete does or how to easily breathe silence hour after hour. Gabe contemplates a way or two of breaking the subject, but every time he looks over at Pete and readies to open his mouth and speak, something inside him makes him turn away again and look forward and watch the road.

When Whiterun shows up in the distance, it's Gabe's last chance, but he finds that the silence is a thick glass wall that cannot be broken with words alone. Pete, though, pauses when the gate is in sight and looks past it, at the road curling around the city walls, and then Gabe _knows_ that Pete is like him, and he can leave it alone for now.

The next night, Pete won't go with him to dinner.

"Why not?" Gabe demands, pulling on his boots and waving for his coin purse.

Pete throws the purse to him and shrugs. He's got a pinched expression on his face, such a change from the day before that it makes Gabe profoundly uncomfortable. All he can think of is that the night before, the way the curling of the road around Whiterun, away from the gate, that was so profound for Gabe, did not mean quite the same thing for Pete.

"I can eat with you here at home if you're sick of Indret's food," Gabe ventures. "I wouldn't blame you if that were the case."

Pete relaxes a little. "I'm fine. Go get drunk and pick some fights. You don't need me for that."

"I like having you there for that, though." 

Pete raises an eyebrow. "You'll have to punch me another time. Go away."

Gabe shoos away the uncertainty in his gut, grabs the purse, claps Pete on the shoulder, and flees to the Bannered Mare.

It's strange to eat alone in a crowded inn. He's not sure of the last time he's done that, been at loose ends enough to notice the noise around him, the music and the chatter. He's missed it, though, so he orders ale and stew and sits close to the bard, exchanging words with his tablemates and whistling when the bard's fingers slip on the strings of the lute.

"Told you," a quiet voice says in his ear.

Gabe knocks over his glass. "What the hell, Victoria?" he hisses, edging away from the pool of ale. There's no way he's mopping it up with his shirt. Pete just had it washed yesterday.

Victoria looks paler than usual, drawn, and there are dark circles under her eyes.

"You look like shit," Gabe informs her. "Told me what?"

"Told you that you'd become an upstanding citizen," says Victoria with a terrifyingly neutral expression. "So utterly boring, Gabriel."

"What do you want?" Gabe asks warily. She looks... bad. As upset as she'd ever show, and he remembers, finally, her words from before, her refusal to say what she'd been doing in Whiterun, the momentary and worryingly frequent glimpses of her he'd caught over the last while. "What are you doing here?"

"My, and I thought you'd forgotten your friends for good." Victoria glares. "Why do you care?"

Gabe shrugs. "I don't have to care, but if you tell me I might help."

"Don't do me any favors," Victoria spits, but her eyes are... not softening, exactly, because she's still obviously angry, but Gabe can see in them that she's ready to be worn down.

In some ways, Victoria is easy to play.

"It's not a favor. I don't care that you're in trouble; you can get yourself out of that easy. If you hire me, though, I can save you some of that trouble."

"It's not a job for one." Victoria looks around. "I'm not discussing it here."

"Lead the way," Gabe says with his most charming smile, one designed to infuriate her, and Victoria scowls and gets up.

"Same room," she says. "Follow me."

Gabe bounces on the edge of the bed, grinning at Victoria's body language that says he's got no chance with her today. This does not upset him in the least, which in and of itself is upsetting, but Gabe shrugs it off. She stays on the other side of the room, her back to the door, watching Gabe's every move.

Gabe waits her out.

"Fine," she says with a sigh. "I took an assignment. It seemed straightforward, and probably is, but I couldn't even start it."

"What was it?"

"Rob a barrow." Victoria smiles humorlessly. The way she shows her teeth is animal. "It unlocks with a claw. You've seen those before."

"Sure, I've seen a claw key or two around," Gabe says cautiously. "What's the problem, then?"

Victoria presses her lips into a thin line. "I lost it."

"Uh." Gabe feels his jaw drop and carefully closes his mouth. "That doesn't seem like you."

"Fucking tell me about it." Victoria sweeps her hair out of her eyes and starts pacing back and forth in front of the door. "As it turns out, it is precisely what I do when attacked by a swarm of Spriggans."

Gabe suppresses a shudder. Spriggans, out of all the nastiness Skyrim has to offer, are his least favorite thing to deal with. Swarms of buzzing green, half fire and half insect, formidable, hard to kill, harder to outrun; it makes him grimace to just think of it.

"Right," Victoria says with mean satisfaction. "So I cut my way out with my dagger and fled, and then it turned out the claw was gone. It must have got knocked loose when the first Spriggan startled me."

Gabe taps his fingers on the bedspread. "So, fine, you didn't have the claw, but couldn't you pick the lock on the door? You're a thief."

Victoria rolls her eyes. "Do you think they give away the barrow secrets to just anyone? Those who figured it out guard it with their lives."

Gabe says nothing. He's trying to think through the humming in his blood that says yes, this, he needs to do this.

"That's what I need help with," Victoria says quietly. "I need to open the barrow and retrieve the Star. But the claw is in that clearing and the barrow can't be opened."

"I'll do it. Draw me a map."

Victoria shakes her head. "Those Spriggans aren't a one-man job."

Gabe tilts his head. "Aren't you coming with me?"

"I can't." She picks through the knickknacks on her table until she finds a quill. She rolls it between her fingers, deft and beautiful. "I took another job. Earning a living somehow. It'll take me out of town for a good two weeks. Besides, I doubt you'll find that claw. I can't go searching the woods for it when there's something more reliable out there for me."

"Doesn't matter." Gabe could wait, but he needs to go now, now, now. "I have a housecarl now. He's sworn to protect me, you know."

Victoria raises an eyebrow. "Is he."

"Oh, yes." Gabe points at the quill in her hand. "Draw me a map, Victoria."

She draws him a map. It's a few days away, if they push. If they take their time, a week or more.

"I've been to this part of Skyrim." Gabe traces his finger over the lines. "I didn't know there was a barrow there. What kind of claw is it?"

"Silver." Victoria points to a shaded spot on the map. "This is the clearing where I must have dropped it. I ran in this direction, though, and noticed that it was gone here, when I got to the road. I doubt I would have dropped it running, but you never know."

"All right." Gabe folds the map. "So. What am I looking for? You called it a star."

Victoria shrugs one shoulder. "I'm not sure what it looks like. It's a soul gem, I'm told. That's all I know."

Gabe hums. "Big and shiny?"

"Presumably." Victoria shows her teeth again. "We tend to go for big and shiny at the Guild. We're so mired in subtlety. Sometimes one has to blow off steam through something noticeable."

"You're very noticeable, I must say," Gabe says, putting the map into his pocket. "Despite your subtle way of life."

"Get lost, Gabe," says Victoria and unlocks the door. "If you find the Star, I will know, so don't try to con me."

"I'd rather have your money than a rock." Gabe grins at the door as it closes in his face.

There's louder music downstairs, and it's more rowdy than before. Gabe feels an itch to stay, to yell at the bard and drink with the crowd, but his legs are humming and his heart is fluttering with the need to leave, and leave right now. He runs downstairs and out the door and walks briskly down to his house, where Pete isn't.

"Some housecarl," Gabe mutters under his breath with a smile breaking through. He'll tell Pete later, when Pete comes back, and meanwhile he can get a start on packing.

When Pete comes back, Gabe has all his swords and weapons laid out on the dining table.

"Oh, there you are," Gabe says, briefly looking around. Pete looks skeptical. "We've got a job to do. Help me choose what to take."

"Where are we going and for how long?" Pete asks promptly. He sounds bland, but Gabe thinks -- hopes, maybe -- that there's excitement hiding underneath.

"It's a multi-step job." Gabe selects a mace that he likes to use sometimes and, after a moment, an old, not-enchanted sword.

"Well, summarize the steps, then, Thane."

Gabe grins. "First we find a silver claw key. Then we find a soul gem in a barrow."

Pete zeroes in on the pertinent details immediately. "First we _find_ a silver claw?" Gabe looks around at Pete's face again, but it's carefully deferential this time. "Do you know where it is?"

"Oh, yes," Gabe says nonchalantly. "It's in a clearing."

"Just lying there."

"Right. There are also Spriggans there, so..."

"All right," Pete interrupts. "Then take the sword with the fire enchantment."

"I don't like that sword."

"Tough." Pete takes it off the table and picks up a tin of polish off a nearby shelf. "You can't just leave fire behind if you're fighting Spriggans. It works on them really well."

Gabe frowns and starts to say something -- he's not sure what, but it's possibly something about Pete needing to listen to him -- but Pete continues. "Why are we looking for a soul gem? You can get them anywhere."

Gabe shrugs. "I don't really know. She said it's called the Star."

Pete's eyebrows suddenly look unhappy. "Well, it can't be Azura's Star because it's accounted for, but the fact that it's called a Star..."

"What's Azura's Star?"

Pete's shoulder twitches. His hands hang limply at his sides, fingers clenched around the blade of the sword and the tin of polish. "It's a reusable soul gem for human souls. Essentially. You can trap souls in it over and over. It's rather convenient, when you think about it."

Gabe frowns and he sits down. "Well, this could be something else. You said yourself that Azura's Star is not lost. And, I mean, it's a job. It's likely worth quite a bit."

"Yeah." Pete licks his lips and heads for the staircase. "When will we set off, Thane?"

"As soon as we get everything ready," Gabe says. "Pete, wait..."

Pete doesn't wait. He walks upstairs in a cloak of plausible deniability that he ever heard Gabe call for him, and that makes something unpleasant settle in Gabe's stomach.

The job doesn't sound that bad. Gabe's looted objects that sounded more precious and more dangerous than a soul gem, just a soul gem, something that Pete had shown to Gabe and used just a month before. And it _is_ a job, something Gabe's missed desperately. He'd go out right now if he could, hit the dusty road and run west, just him and a sword and empty satchels for the treasures that travel brings.

It's frustrating that Gabe can't figure out a way to satisfy Pete. He seems unpleasable, and that, in Gabe's experience, is not something that people _are_. Everyone wants something. Everyone has a secret place, a secret hope that Gabe can find and press on. Pete can't be an exception.

Gabe goes to bed still thinking about it, how he thought he'd been on the right track taking Pete on the bandit bounty hunt. Pete had seemed a little different then, and he'd looked... he'd looked like he was in his element, or at least using his talents, his real talents, out there.

Gabe doesn't notice when he falls asleep, he spends so long in a half-dreaming state, turning his thoughts over and over in his head. He accidentally sleeps in, until his bedroom is stuffy, warmed by the sun after the cool night, and when he wakes up, the blankets are wrapped all around him, choking.

"Fuck," he mutters, kicking off the covers and dragging himself out of bed. His room looks typical, the way he's used to by now, a basin at the table, his clothes clean and folded on the chest, and the faint smell of breakfast wafting up the stairs.

Gabe splashes water on his face and gets dressed. The house is quiet -- Pete is out on his morning errands. He walks in in the middle of breakfast, when Gabe's chewing on what will likely be his last sweet roll in a while, laden with armor and weapons.

"Whoa," Gabe says, springing out of his chair and bounding over to Pete. "Easy there."

Pete huffs, but lets Gabe take a chest piece and a couple of swords off his hands, making the pile of things in his hands short enough for Gabe to be able to see his face. "I was taking care of it."

"I need you untripped," Gabe says and drops the armor on the floor.

Pete sighs. "I just got the dents removed out of those."

Gabe shrugs. "It's just armor. Are we ready to go?"

"We will be by tonight. Do you want to set out in the morning?"

Gabe turns around to buy himself some time to think. They'll travel enough nights on the way there, and it only makes sense to set out in the morning, make the best of the light while they can and go to sleep tired, but Gabe's missed traveling nights. If they could leave now...

"Thane?"

"Yes," Gabe says quickly. "In the morning. Very early."

Gabe helps Pete out with the packing, and packs his own clothing as well. He visits the shops to get some spare lockpicks and potions, and even buys a few soul gems for his sword, despite the exorbitant price and Gabe's complete lack of desire to use them.

Pete retires early for the night and Gabe paces back and forth for a few minutes until Pete grumpily yells at him to stop. Gabe considers ignoring him for a minute, but then he notices their equipment and supplies sitting in the shadows by the door, large, dark shapes that will be their companions, and he has to go upstairs and forget them for the night.

The morning is bright. The air is so fresh and cool Gabe's throat almost hurts, and he has no desire to make conversation. Neither does Pete, who goes on ahead in what seems like a deliberate move to avoid talking.

They travel along the river for hours. There's chirping below, deer on the other bank, and the land looks alive, gorgeous and blooming. For a moment Gabe's not sure that he doesn't just want to spend the entire day there, sitting on the riverbank with his eyes closed, letting the sun warm him through and through.

Every time his eyes fall on the river, though, he hears the crunch of gravel ahead of him, the sound of Pete walking on. It's fascinating and confusing how Pete manages to carry all that he does, the assortment of weapons he switches between and the bags of supplies seemingly not weighing him down at all.

Gabe catches up to Pete. "So, hey. Pete. I've been patient, but with me curiosity sadly wins out every time. What's your story?"

Pete gives him an arch look. "The tale of how I ended up serving you? Not much to tell. You were there."

"No, no, no." Gabe kicks a pebble down the road and it bounces like on water, making rings in the dust. "How you got stuck in Whiterun in the first place. I can sense a story. You can't fool me."

"It's not very interesting."

Gabe scoffs. "Most guards can't tell their ass from their elbow, Pete. You're competent at everything. There's a reason for that, and I bet it's plenty interesting."

"You think I'm competent at everything?" Pete says with a smile in his voice that's almost shocking. "I'm flattered."

"You're practically a mage with your greatsword and a bow."

"Most mages are awful at armed combat," Pete points out.

"It was a metaphor."

"Do you even know what a metaphor is?"

"It's a thing in a book. Don't change the subject."

Pete bursts out laughing and Gabe grins at him. "Of course. My apologies, Thane."

"You could call me Gabe."

"I will consider it." Pete looks around. "We should pick up the pace."

He starts to run before Gabe has a chance to nod, and Gabe doesn't have much choice other than to run after Pete. It feels good, so good to stretch his legs after a month of slow-paced life, to feel the wind on his face. They pass underneath the cover of trees, a refuge from the afternoon sun. After a while, the road starts to climb up and Gabe has to give up his vague thoughts of engaging Pete in conversation again because his lungs start burning with the effort, but that feels good too, proof that his body is living.

The pleasure of the run ends when they take the next winding turn and stumble into a bandit camp. The bandits spring up, axes at the ready, four against two.

"Fuck," Gabe states for the record and draws his sword.

Pete's greatsword is already singing through the air. Gabe takes on the two who've converged on him, a man and a woman in patched-over iron armor, not much of a challenge, and drops them to the ground dead without so much as a scratch on himself. He turns to help Pete just as Pete takes the head off the first attacker and right in time to see Pete cry out and stagger from a glancing blow to his arm from the second's axe.

Gabe doesn't think. He plants his sword into the back of the bandit's neck, pulling it out with a disgusting crack he always hopes never to hear again, and drops to his knees in front of Pete. "Are you all right?"

Pete's face is pale, his hand clenched around the wounded arm. "Been better," he bites out.

There's blood seeping through his fingers, staining Pete's fingernails red. "Let me see."

"I'm putting pressure on it," Pete says, but he lets Gabe unbend his fingers one at a time and bites his lip as Gabe quickly tears off the end of Pete's sleeve to look at the wound. It's not a deep cut, as Gabe suspected, but it's messy, ragged skin and angry red flesh soaked in blood. Gabe pours a potion on it and bandages it up with some linen as quickly as he can while Pete goes whiter and whiter.

"Pete, do not pass out," Gabe orders and tells himself that Pete is going to be all right.

"Some water would be good right now," Pete says faintly. "My blood vessels are completely empty."

"You would not be able to complain if that were the case. Don't be dramatic." Gabe props Pete up by the side of the road, flush with the vertical wall of rock, where the bandits' sleeping rolls are set up, wrinkling his nose at the smell. "Do not pass out. You must follow my orders and that's my order."

"Fuck you, Thane," Pete says in a singsong voice. "Fuck you."

"You wish," Gabe throws over his shoulder and kicks apart the bandits' supplies to find a skin of water. "Here, drink this."

Pete brings it to his lips with his good arm and pours the water into his mouth, licking at the rim to get the last drops. "Delicious."

Gabe's never seen him so wasted. Apparently the way to get Pete to unbend is to give him a flesh wound. "Have a healing potion," he says, shaking a bottle in Pete's face. "Pete. Healing potion."

"They're disgusting."

"Drink."

"Ugh." Pete tips the bottle to his mouth and his face instantly goes three shades warmer. "I feel better."

Gabe feels the knot in his stomach untangle. He sits on the stinky bedroll next to Pete. "Not a mage after all, huh?"

"That's what I was trying to tell you." Pete leans his head back against the rock. "Only so much I can do. This wall is hard."

"That's because it's a mountain. The wall is made of rocks."

"Oh," says Pete. "That makes sense."

"I should've been watching your back," Gabe says guiltily.

"That's not your job. It's my job to watch yours." Pete tips his head back, looking up at the blue sky. Gabe tries not to stare at the line of his throat. "I'm a weapon, yours to aim as you see fit."

"I have weapons already," Gabe says lightly, ignoring the way his stomach twists at Pete's words.

Pete makes a dismissive noise. "I'm the best of weapons. I cut like a... like a..."

"Like a knife?"

"That's the dullest thing you're carrying aside from that history of Skyrim."

"I left the history of Skyrim at home, actually."

"Very wise." Pete is quiet for a moment. "I cut like fire."

Gabe's fingers find the hilt of the fire-enchanted sword, the one he didn't use this time. "Fire doesn't actually cut, but all right."

Pete sighs. "Are we going to move on tonight?"

That's a good question. Gabe looks around the bandit camp. It's right on the road, which is a definite negative, but it's right there and Pete needs the rest, which is a definite positive. The bedrolls are horrible, but they have their own. There are provisions.

"Give me a minute." Gabe gets up and walks along the road, trying to find a crevice in the rock they can use as shelter for the night. He doesn't want to stay in a cave, but anything that would get them off the road would work.

Luck is with him because he finds it, a dip in the wall partially hidden by a pile of boulders right where the trail inexplicably sways to the side. Miraculously, there's nothing there: no bones that would mark a bear's or a troll's favored spot, no opening in the rock. It's a quiet oasis lined with a carpet of grass spotted with red flowers. It's perfect.

"We should move on," Pete says sleepily when Gabe returns. "It's not safe here."

Gabe gathers up the bandits' provisions and urges Pete to his feet. "I found us a better spot. Just down the road."

Pete sways on his feet, leaning into Gabe's side. Gabe feels a jolt of warmth before Pete manages to right himself. "All right. Let's go."

Gabe walks alongside him, making sure Pete doesn't fall and hurt himself again. Their progress is slow -- Pete needs the rest more badly than Gabe thought, and Gabe thanks the stars that he found shelter.

"This is nice," Pete says when Gabe leads him around the boulder pile into the little rock-encircled clearing. "Like a well. Without water. Like a honeymoon chamber at an inn."

"That's beautiful." Gabe shakes out Pete's bedroll and puts it on the ground next to the wall. "Lie down."

Pete obediently lies down, his weapons still strapped to his back. Gabe sighs. "That's not how you lie down, Pete."

"You're going to show me?" Pete says with a strange smile.

Gabe shakes his head, confused. "Let me help you with your bow."

Pete rolls onto his front so Gabe can get at the bow, catching his bad arm on the ground.

"Fuck," Gabe says frantically when Pete shouts in pain. "Pete!"

"I'm all right," Pete bites out and half-growls, half-sobs. Gabe can barely see his face, Pete's pressing it into the bedroll so hard, but he can see the flash of bared teeth and a grimace of pain.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, Gabe chants to himself, gently extricating Pete from his various deadly implements. "All done."

Pete's breathing more evenly now. "When's your fucking potion supposed to start working?"

"Couple of hours. Just relax."

"Cold," Pete says.

Gabe spreads his own bedroll on the ground alongside Pete's and lies down next to him, dragging blankets over them both. "Go to sleep, Pete."

Pete yawns. Gabe edges a little closer to him, just to warm Pete up a little more, and Pete turns to him a little, cradling his bad arm carefully. "If your potion doesn't make me feel better, I quit."

"You can't quit and you're terrible at being sick. It'll work."

Pete's only response is quiet breathing, even and slow, and Gabe lets out a relieved breath in response. It's not even dark yet, but no matter; they can set out in the night when Pete feels better and make up the time on the quiet road, and with that thought Gabe closes his eyes and listens to the rustling of leaves overhead until he dozes off.

When he wakes up, Pete is sitting upright and the moon is high above them, only its edge still hanging below the top of the mountain. It's dark and quiet.

"What time is it?" Gabe asks. His mouth is dry. "Is there water?"

Pete hands him a skin with his bad arm, barely wincing. Something lets go inside Gabe's chest. "Must be about three in the morning. We slept long."

It was stupid of Gabe to fall asleep, but he slept so well he can hardly regret it. "Is there food?"

"Is there water, is there food," Pete says dryly. "It's like we never left."

"Oh, be quiet." Gabe gets up and rummages through his bag. "Stew?" he asks, waving a jar at Pete.

Pete takes it without comment and gulps down the stew without even using a spoon. It's disgusting but effective, and when Gabe fails to find a spoon in the bag he follows Pete's lead.

"We lost a lot of time yesterday."

Gabe shrugs. They're not on a schedule, but he's not one for dawdling either. "We can set off now and make up the time. It was nice walking at night last time, wasn't it?"

Pete hums under his breath. "I missed it."

"Oh?" Gabe asks noncommittally.

"I used to be on the road all the time," Pete says haltingly. Gabe closes his eyes and breathes silently, like Pete is a danger he has to hide from. "I had to stop. I was in my own head too much. I couldn't do it anymore."

That's a familiar feeling, though Gabe would never have put it that way. "Being in a city is less lonely?"

"I wasn't lonely, exactly. I didn't have any distractions. Well..." Pete corrects himself. "There were always distractions, but it was all me all the time. In a city is different. There are other people to think about."

"I don't think too much about other people," Gabe says.

Pete laughs quietly. "I noticed that."

Gabe makes a face. "That's not what I meant! I meant that's not why I like the city."

"Why do you?" Pete asks, getting up and putting away his bedroll.

Gabe follows suit. "I don't know." He thinks. "I like that I have a house."

"And a manservant?"

Gabe rolls his eyes. "Sure."

They quietly get back on the road, ending the conversation. Night travel is only as effective as you make it, light and voices both undermining the safety of darkness, and for a while all Gabe focuses on is making his footsteps as silent as possible and not falling behind Pete's small shadowed form.

 

They make it to the barrow on the third day -- or, at least, the fork in the road Victoria had described exactly. The overgrown road makes it clear that, at the very least, this isn't a stomping ground for violent riff-raff, Gabe notes with relief, throwing a glance at how Pete is holding his arm.

"So," Pete says. "We need that clearing?"

"I suppose." Gabe takes out Victoria's map and fiddles with it until it's lined up with the direction he's facing. "It's supposed to be only a few minutes' walk away. That way."

Pete looks where Gabe's hand is pointing, towards a light-drenched part of the woods. "It looks so friendly and welcoming."

"That usually means a death trap," Gabe says grimly.

"I hate Spriggans." Pete sighs. "Get your sword out. The fire one."

"I fucking know." Gabe draws it and walks ahead, bending low branches out of their way.

The clearing is quiet.

It's also large.

"How are we supposed to find a claw in here?" Gabe asks, the question he's been avoiding finally unavoidable.

In response, Pete bites his lip and raises his hand. It glows blue, the trail of a spell lighting up and feathering across the clearing.

"You're full of surprises," Gabe breathes out. "Pete."

"Follow it," Pete says, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's almost over."

Gabe sprints across the clearing, the light obscuring his vision like fog. It vanishes when Gabe reaches the end of the trail, where there's a flash of silver hidden in the grass.

He picks it up, and then there's a buzzing in his ears and angry cold stinging in his whole body like an enveloping swarm of insects.

He hears Pete's voice and the slide of metal, but there's no relief, and when he opens his eyes he sees Pete fighting off another flickering green creature. There's a pain in his back that means there's more than one, and he draws the sword Pete enchanted and swings it, eyes shut against the stinging of the cold fire of the Spriggan.

The sword meets resistance and breathes heat into his face, tongues of flame licking at his skin and quieting the stinging, and that's how he knows this is possible. He swings again and again, taking comfort in the sound of Pete's greatsword like an axe hacking into wood, its shockingly familiar swish through the air, and the sword burns until there's nothing to burn.

Gabe falls to his knees on the ground, breathing heavily. “Pete?” he rasps. Everything hurts.

There's a final crunch and then silence.

“Pete?”

“Yeah,” Pete calls back. “Did we get them all?”

Gabe opens his eyes. They feel puffy. “I think so.”

“That was...” there's a sound from across the clearing, a hissing that Gabe finally recognizes as Pete wiping his blade on the grass. “Intense.”

Gabe coughs out a laugh, surprised. “Not the word I'd choose.” He'd save that for sex, usually.

Pete pads across the clearing towards Gabe, his feet thumping quietly on the grass, and crouches next to Gabe. “Are you hurt?”

Gabe looks up at Pete's face. He's got cuts on his face like sapling branches whipped across it. He looks solemn, like Gabe's used to, but at the same time his face looks completely, breathtakingly different. Gabe hadn't realized that there was tension in it, but now that there isn't any, he has no idea how he missed it before.

“Gabe?” Pete asks warily. “Anything broken? Internal bleeding?”

Gabe shakes his head. “Your face is all cut up.”

Pete wrinkles his forehead. “Does it make me look distinguished? Rugged and dangerous?”

Gabe reaches out and touches his thumb lightly to Pete's cheek, where blood is welling up in tiny droplets along the longest cut. Pete hisses but doesn't pull away. “I like you better without blood on your face.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Pete says lightly.

Gabe cups his cheek and leans in and kisses him and it's incredible, Pete's warm lips and blood drying tacky between their faces, until the moment Pete pulls away.

“Whoa.”

Gabe breathes out. “Sorry?”

Pete shakes his head. There's a red, Gabe-sized thumbprint on the apple of his cheek.

“No, I'm sorry,” Gabe says, taking a steadying breath and moving back, away from Pete. “I drag you on these quests when you don't have a choice about going. That's not... I shouldn't do that. And now you're hurt.” 

Pete frowns and Gabe stands up and turns away. The silver claw is on the ground a few paces away. Pete's spell pointed him right. Gabe picks it up and stuffs it into a satchel with shaking hands.

His sword is still flickering around the edges, and he picks it up too, sheathes it. “You don't have to go into the barrow with me. It's dangerous.”

Pete's silence is icy. Gabe forces himself to turn around and say, lightly, “Let me take care of your face.”

Pete's face is set and expressionless, but Gabe pretends everything is just fine, normal like he hadn't kissed him, and kneels down next to Pete. "Tilt your head back."

Pete does as Gabe says, and for the second time in a few minutes, Gabe cups Pete's blood-streaked cheek. He tries to keep his hand steady and to keep his eyes firmly on the cuts, to ignore Pete's heavy eyes on his face. 

"I really am fine," Pete says. 

The way his skin and bones move under Gabe's fingers set Gabe's heart racing. He pulls a clean, or at the very least unused rag out of his pocket and dabs at the worst cut with it.

"This usually works better if you wet the cloth," Pete murmurs. "Trust me, I've been in a lot of fights."

Gabe's cheeks grow hot, and he drops his hand from Pete's face. "I believe it." 

He pours too much healing potion onto the rag; it drips through to his hand and runs down into his sleeve, warm and wet like Pete's blood. 

Pete tilts his head back again without Gabe having to ask. Gabe carefully looks at the cuts only, wiping the blood off Pete's tanned skin, his smooth cheeks and rough, stubbled jaw, running the cloth gently over and over each graze until red droplets no longer well up in its wake. Pete's breathing is so hot against Gabe's wrist. Gabe's stomach aches as he gives in and lets his wrist touch Pete's lips, which were so soft when Gabe kissed them and are soft and hot and dry now, warming up the racing blood in the vein under them. He likely imagines the catch in Pete's breathing and the slight increase in the pressure of Gabe's lips against his wrist.

“You're wrong, you know,” Pete says finally, after Gabe's taken his wrist away. Gabe looks up from Pete's mouth to his eyes. “About me not having a choice.”

Gabe's chest tightens. “You're my housecarl.”

“Yeah.” Pete gives Gabe a small smile. “I'm your hired hand. Your weapon, to point at your enemies and strike. The things I do in town, around the house, that's dull as fuck.”

“You're really good at them,” Gabe says dumbly.

Pete purses his lips. Gabe drags his eyes up to Pete's. “I'm _bored_. This,” he says, gesturing around the clearing, “this is what I live for. What I'm best at.”

“Even though you keep bleeding?”

“I didn't bleed last time. And that definitely would've made things more fun.”

“So you'll go into the barrow with me?”

Pete straightens up from his crouch and groans. “Yes, obviously.” He stretches his legs, bending over and touching his fingers to his toes, his leather armor riding up in the back. “If you're really worried about my well-being, you should be more concerned about sending me back alone than me going into the barrow with you.”

Gabe grins and lets himself look. If Pete's not going to make him talk about the kiss, about touching Pete's mouth, he's happy enough to let it go and not think about it. He's not sure why he did it anyway.

He has to look at Victoria's map to figure out where the barrow is in relation to the clearing. While they were under attack, they got turned around, and it takes Gabe a while to read the way they came from the mess of footsteps in the ground, the trampled grass where he and Pete had knelt.

He rotates the map in his hands, squinting, and jumps when Pete taps him on the shoulder.

“Whoa,” Pete says with a smile, white teeth flashing. “It's just me.” He raises his eyebrow at the upside-down map in Gabe's hands. “Can you actually read these?”

“Fuck you,” Gabe says and turns the map around.

“I gathered some taproot from the Spriggans.”

Gabe drops the map. “Give it here.”

Pete rolls his eyes but hands over the two roots. “You like alchemy.”

Gabe shrugs and sniffs the taproot. It smells fresh and earthy, better than anything he's ever used from a shop. “I'm good at it.”

"We need to go that way, for the record," says Pete, pointing at a trail between two trees that looks exactly like the trail between two other trees a few degrees away. Huh. Gabe goes anyway because he hates maps.

"You are rather good at it," says Pete, and it takes Gabe a moment to remember that he's talking about alchemy. "That healing potion fixed me right up. It was one of yours, right?"

Pete's words make something warm and soft, ember-like, glow in Gabe's chest. "One of mine," he confirms.

"Knew it," Pete says with pride in his voice, and the ember glows redder.

Gabe always knows what to say, but he's not sure here. He's grateful when the trees untangle and lead them out onto the road they were on before, and from there onto a narrow, branching-off trail covered in moss and water-filled deer tracks, exactly as Victoria had described.

The barrow entrance appears in front of them so suddenly that Gabe's not sure they have the right place at first.

Pete and Gabe look at the door in silence for a while.

"They're usually much more impressive," says Gabe finally.

Pete swipes a hand over the mossy stone door. "I was expecting something more than a door. Maybe an arch or two."

"At least _some_ steps. Maybe three steps."

"I expected at least five steps."

"I require a fuckin' stairway." Gabe bites his lip and feels along the seam of the door. "It'll be refreshing to just walk in for once, if we manage to get it open."

"There are hinges on this side," Pete says. Gabe can hear that his brow is furrowed in his voice. "Try pushing it?"

Gabe pushes and the door creaks open. "Anticlimactic."

"Get your weapon out," Pete says in a tight voice, arrow already in his bow, and shoots, the faint outline of an oncoming skeleton staggering and falling backward in a cloud of dust.

Gabe stumbles over something on the ground, bones or tree roots. It's too dark to see well and all he can see are interplays of shadows, dark on dark on dark.

He can recognize the shape of a skeleton, though -- not quite fast enough to not get stung by an arrow glancing off his chest and nicking his chin. It's flickering ahead of them, taking careful steps back as Pete advances on it, his arm whipping back to fit arrow after arrow and set them flying.

Gabe skirts the wall of the chamber as fast as he can without making noise or falling down, feeling out the wall with his free hand. Smooth,dry stone, solid construction, hardly a crack anywhere. Just bones or roots on the ground. This place must have skylights, he thinks, but they must be piled over with debris, overgrown with weeds.

The whistle of an arrow and Pete's soft echoing groan of pain brings Gabe back to his goal. He manages to sneak close to the skeleton without it noticing and decapitates it without a second thought, sending bones and the bow clattering to the floor.

"All right?" he calls to Pete, wiping his chin.

"Fine," comes Pete's voice.

Gabe squints. His eyes are becoming used to the darkness and he can make out Pete's small compact shape.

"We're going to need light," comes Pete's voice. His face suddenly lights up, hand glowing bright like he's cradling a flame. "See if you can find any torches. I can't keep this up for long."

Gabe kicks at the clattering things on the ground and sweeps the walls of the chamber with his eyes wherever Pete points. Sure enough, there are torches, some still with oil. Gabe lights them all as fast as he can, and by the time Pete's spell goes out, he can see the round, symbol-etched door on the other side of the chamber and Pete's face, looking as familiar as ever in the dancing light.

"You have to teach me some of those," Gabe says finally, after he's looked at Pete for long enough that it started to become awkward.

Pete smiles, his cheeks going round and his eyes going crinkly. "When we get back, we'll get you some spell books. Set you right up."

"You can't just teach me?" Gabe asks as non-whiney as he can.

Pete shakes his head and keeps smiling at Gabe. "Books. You love books."

"I don't _love_ books," Gabe grumbles and pushes aside thoughts of Pete whispering secret knowledge in his ear, shaping his hand and making a flame spring up. 

Pete becomes serious again. "I suppose we need to move on." 

The corridor smells dank. Gabe rubs the back of his neck. He already wants a shower. "Want to make a bet on how many skeletons we'll find?"

"Do draugrs count?" Pete asks, wrinkling his nose at the empty crypts lining the far wall.

"Absolutely," says Gabe and finally looks down on the floor. It's a mixture of bones and branches with the occasional tree root surging up through the cracked uneven floor. It's everything.

"Well, then," Pete says finally. He snatches the claw out of Gabe's pack and walks up to it before Gabe can stop him. 

 

Gabe's suddenly breathless with how much he wants to stay here, in his wide, dark chamber where the torches are glowing and the world is an open door away, instead of descending into the tomb to the violence it holds -- but, as always, Pete is ahead of him, receding, and Gabe must go or lose him.

"It's booby-trapped if you mess up," Gabe calls after him anxiously and hurries to catch up. Sure enough, the walls around the door are pebbled with small, dart-sized openings. "I'm not patching you up a third time."

"This is easy," Pete says, turning the silver claw over and peering at the underside. "Dragon, wiggly thing, eagle. Help me turn the circles."

He's dwarfed by the size of the nested circles of stone. The eagle symbols lined up on the door are the size of Pete's head. There's no way he could even reach the top one.

Gabe grips the edge of the embossed eagle on the outer circle of the door, breaking half of his nails and skinning the pads of his fingers. After a tug or two, the circle gives and rotates, sliding the dragon symbol into place above the center of the door. 

Pete takes care of the middle ring. Gabe watches him push it deftly, his hands on the brown stone. The wiggly thing slides into place as well, and the eagle is already lined up in the inner ring. 

Gabe takes a breath. "Booby-trap," he reminds Pete, and stands behind him. It wouldn't be fair if Pete got hit by all the darts.

Pete fits the claw into the holes in the center of the door, and the door rolls open butter-smooth, with a low, even rumbling of stone, revealing a corridor behind it.  
Gabe kicks the bones and branches strewn over the floor apart with his foot, clearing the beginning of the path to the corridor, and offers Pete his arm. "Shall we?"

Pete looks at Gabe's arm for a moment and then gently touches it right above the wrist where the gauntlet is tight around his forearm, so it's like Pete is touching Gabe's very skin. "I will lead the way."

 

"Only one way on from here," Pete says.

"Well, that's good," says Gabe. Gabe can't see his face, but he can see how the edge of Pete's tunic is fluttering gently in the cool stream of air from the passage.

Pete draws his greatsword and walks farther into the shadows, throwing one last look at Gabe to make sure he's following.

The barrow doesn't put up much of a fight. Gabe gets grazed by a draugr arrow, and Pete slays the draugr without hesitation, grim-faced, and does the same to the rest of the skeletons and draugrs inside.

It's easy. Pete makes it look easy, maybe, Gabe thinks; there's hardly anything for Gabe to do because Pete's there ahead of him, leaving Gabe nothing but bones and spilled gold on the floor. 

It's almost anticlimactic when the passage opens up. The chamber they're in is similar to the first one, round as a bun, ivy and moss creeping down the walls at the top where the air is less stale and there is perhaps some sunlight every now and again. It's simple in such a way that Gabe's skin starts to creep.

There's a dais on the far side of the chamber. When Gabe looks around for Pete after going through the urns to either side of the doorway and pocketing the loose handful of septims stashed inside, Pete is next to it, illuminated by something shining from the stone-carved lectern atop the dais.

"I think that's it," Pete says, not loudly, but his voice carries so well in this room that Gabe can hear him as though Pete spoke in his ear. "It's the Star."

Gabe stands, frozen, and it's as though it takes Pete an eternity to reach out and touch the Star, minutes when Gabe could have shouted for Pete to be careful, to wait, but didn't.

When Pete disappears, Gabe ignores the weakness in his legs and the pit of horror in his stomach and staggers over to the dais.

The Star is about the size of Gabe's fist, a clear faceted gem reflecting torchlight and glowing gold in the middle. Gabe tries to breathe through the waves of hot and cold rippling through his body. 

"Okay," Gabe tells himself, because it has to be. "Okay."

He sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out a rag, the same bloody, potion-soaked rag he touched Pete with just hours ago, outside in the sunlight, under crowns of trees, where this wasn't happening. He stares at it for a while and then wraps the Star in it, careful not to touch. 

He can't remember getting out of the barrow, can't really remember anything until several hours later when he trips over a root poking through the stomped-down dirt of the path. He falls flat on his face, and the Star, hidden inside his tunic, bruises the flesh over his heart. 

Gabe lies, breathing in the dust of the road. The rich smell of the earth is grounding, and he breathes it for a while, letting his nose untangle the threads of decay and fungus and his head untangle what in all of Tamriel he could do. The image of Pete appears in his mind, of his concentrated face and a ball of blue fire in his palm. The flame shows the way to what is sought. If Gabe could cast that spell now, if Pete had taught him that knowledge, where would the flame go? Would it circle round and round Gabe, zeroing in on the lump inside Gabe's shirt, or...

A mage. He needs a mage. 

Gabe scrambles up and runs. He doesn't notice much of the journey back to Whiterun either. Sometimes he eats and sometimes he collapses under trees, wrapped in a blanket and falling gratefully into dark sleep where he can't think. Sometimes he draws his weapon and wipes it off on the grass. It's only when he runs up the steps to Dragonsreach and stumbles into Gerard's quarters that he stops and blinks away the fog.

Gerard, of course, reaches straight for the Star when Gabe sets it on the table. 

"Don't _touch_ it, for fuck's sake," Gabe snaps at him. "I'm telling you, it made Pete disappear when he picked it up."

"Relax, baby," Gerard tells him from under his fringe of messy dark hair. "Just unwrapping it."

The bloody cloth is finally dry and stiff, but it peels away from the Star easily enough. 

Gerard raises his eyebrows. "See, yelling was completely unnecessary. It's full. It doesn't want anything else."

"Don't--"

"Shit," Gerard drawls, running his fingers over the smooth shiny edges of the gem. "Oh, shit."

"And that means what, exactly?" Gabe asks impatiently. "My... Pete is in there. I guess. I mean..." 

Pete must be in there because Gabe feels it when he gingerly touches it, a current that runs through the Star, flickering electrically through all its planes and edges like a golden spider web and throwing itself around Gabe, drawing him in. And the only reason he's not inside is that it's too full of Pete's soul that it greedily sucked into itself.

Gerard purses his lips and looks at Gabe, all sharp-eyed. "Oh, yeah, he's in there, all right. You just have to..." He suddenly stands up and bounds over to the bookcase in two long strides, dragging the trampled hem of his robe behind him. "Here," he says, shoving a tome into Gabe's hands. "Open it. It's the clairvoyance spell. Cast it and you'll see where your heart's desire is."

"That can't possibly be what that spell does," Gabe says, opening the book and thumbing through it. He feels a humming in his mind and he suddenly knows, remembers it from when Pete cast it. "It shows you the path to your current goal."

"Right," Gerard says dryly. "That's completely different."

Gabe flushes and flexes his hand, which starts to hum just like his mind, and a blue flame springs up in it.

"Like that," Gerard whispers, leaning forward, the lines of his throat tense and expectant. "Now just let go."

Gabe lets the flame flow out of his hand, a trail of blue leading to the Star, and he knows, irrevocably knows that Pete is there.

Gerard clears his throat. "So now we know for sure," he says.

"I already knew for sure," says Gabe, suddenly furious. "I need you to get him out."

Gerard's eyes get a little round. "Oh, I can't do that."

Gabe feels like kicking over every one of Gerard's artfully arranged stands of magical paraphernalia. "What good are you, then, mage?"

Gerard juts out his jaw and Gabe thinks, wildly, this would be a great fight, if only he could provoke Gerard enough, but Gerard says coldly, "Because the Star wants you."

"What do you mean, it _wants_ me?" Gabe asks even as he knows exactly what Gerard means, that crackle of gold spider web pulling him inside.

Gerard looks at him knowingly. "You feel it. It doesn't want just anyone. It's you. It recognizes you."

"I've never seen that thing before in my life."

Gerard smiles. It's not very nice. "That's not necessary. It has Pete."

Gabe holds the Star up to his face. "I feel like I should be able to see him. Like looking through a window. Or a slab of crystal."

Gerard treks back to one of his cabinets, tugging at his robe, while Gabe turns the Star round and round in his fingers, the light reflecting off it hurting his eyes but not enough to stop looking for that glimpse of Pete. 

"Can you send me inside?" he asks quietly.

He's not surprised when he doesn't hear an answer. He'd barely heard himself speak. What can Gerard say, anyway?

Gabe drags his eyes away from the Star for a minute, watching Gerard systematically go through each of his bookshelves. They're cluttered with strange, sharp-edged things, books without covers like they don't want to give away their names, humming boxes.

Gabe looks back at the Star. If Gerard can't figure it out, what then? Then he won't have Pete. He's had people die at his side before; he'd traveled alone more often than not -- much more often. He'll go on alone, set out on foot without anyone else's well-being to burden him, like he had almost every day of his adult life up until a month ago.

That shouldn't be a terrifying prospect, but it makes Gabe feel like his insides are being scraped out layer by layer with sandpaper. He'd had Pete under his skin, inside his pores, and now he's hollow.

If Gerard can't figure it out, Gabe's life will be a puzzle to solve.

“Can you send me inside?” Gabe asks again, louder this time, and steels himself for the answer.

Gerard's voice is closer than Gabe expected. "I'm about to."

"What the hell is that?"

"An artifact." Gerard doesn't look like he's about to share more. The thing looks sharp and angry and purposeful. "Don't do anything stupid."

"What's _smart_?" Gabe stands, the chair kicking out behind him, and holds the Star up like a shield.

"How should I know?" Gerard says and waves the artifact over Gabe.

“Wait, wait!” Gabe says, panicked. “You don't know what it's going to do?”

Gerard pauses for a second. “I know what it's _supposed_ to do.” He looks at Gabe hopefully, with big eyes, like it's enough of an answer.

“Is it supposed to send me inside, Gerard?” Gabe asks patiently.

“Somewhat,” Gerard says, nodding vigorously.

Gabe grits his teeth. It's a distraction from everything pulling and tugging at his guts, at least. “What does _that_ mean?”

Gerard starts waving over Gabe again. “You'll be inside, but not, like, a tiny person inside some glass, you know?”

“No,” says Gabe, gripping the Star tighter.

“The Star isn't a thing,” Gerard says like Gabe hasn't spoken. “It's the place where it was, turned inside out. You'll just come back there, that's all.”

Gabe lets out a breath, thinking fast and thinking of Pete standing by the dais, his face lit up by the Star. He'll just have to find the exit. Lead Pete out. How hard could it be, with all the draugrs dead and all passageways cleared? 

"Wait," he says, as a thought drops into his mind like a rock through a glass window. "Gerard. I was trying to find this for a woman named Victoria. She lives at the inn. Would you tell her what happened? There's no way I can give this to her."

"Um," Gerard says and gropes around for a piece of parchment. "Victoria, inn, Star. Okay. Ready?"

Gabe stares at the artifact. “Is there a trick to it?”

The corner of Gerard's mouth quirks up. “There's always a trick.”

Gerard passes the artifact over Gabe one last time and vanishes like Pete had, before, but in reverse, and there's glass in front of Gabe's eyes and capillaries of the golden net that is the energy of the Star, all flashing brightly for an instant before they fade away too.

Gabe is in the chamber with the dais, and Pete is at the dais. Gabe squeezes his eyes shut, but not before he sees the walls all lined in clear crystal, the glass floor, torchlight refracting dreamlike from all surfaces. The same barrow, but inside-out.

"Some soul gem, huh?" Pete's voice says with dry humor. “Open your eyes. I think you can do that here.”

Gabe opens his eyes and blinks away the bright spots of orange and purple until he can see Pete clearly.

Pete smiles at him. Gabe smiles back without even thinking about it. "Could've powered your equipment for weeks with me, Thane. Why didn't you?"

Gabe can't look away. He takes a step forward, then breaks into a run, Pete's figure bouncing up and down in his vision.

Pete steps back and throws his hands up with fear in his face. “Stop.”

Gabe stops like it's a commandment or a spell, windmilling his arms to keep his balance. “Why?”

“I think there's a trick to it,” says Pete, lowering his hands slowly.

“I'm told there's always a trick.” Gabe runs his eyes over Pete greedily, taking in all the lines of his small frame, the patches of dust and wear on his armor, the spots of tarnish on the hilt of his greatsword that appeared while they were traveling. “What kind of trick is this?”

Pete shakes his head. “You'll touch me and we won't ever leave here.”

Gabe wrinkles his nose. “Is it like one of those stories with the pointless tests?”

Pete steps off the dais. “Probably. You should probably stop looking at me now. Who knows how this fucking test works. ”

“But I'm already looking at you," Gabe protests. "Why can't I keep looking at you?"

Pete sighs. "I think this chamber is all right, but you have to lead me out, and that's iffier. You'll look, you'll want to touch. You'll hear me, you'll want to turn around. You'll be relieved to see me, you'll want to touch. Lead me out. Assume conservative rules for this fucking place. That's the last thing I'll say."

"But...” _But I don't want to_ , Gabe thinks wildly, stopping himself from saying it just in time. _But I want to kiss you_. He turns his back to Pete and squares his shoulders. "All right. Have it your way. Let's go."

Pete doesn't reply, but Gabe feels that golden tug at his back, like the drag of wind during a gallop. He leans in and steps forward with effort. "I guess we should just... walk out of here."

The light playing off the walls makes it hard to find the passage that led them to the final chamber. Gabe feels along the glass-lined stone for a true opening between the niches, and when he finally finds it, all his senses scream at him that it's wrong, because there's just more glass ahead and no draft to tell him that following the air will lead him out. It doesn't smell like anything. Gabe can't even smell his own sweat. He can't smell Pete. 

Gabe bites his lip and screws up his eyes and tries to get that blue flame to play in his hand, to lead him to his goal or his heart's desire, but it circles and circles around Gabe until it dies out and Gabe is gasping for breath. 

"All right," Gabe says quietly when he can breathe again, trying not to feel devastated. He steps forward into the passage. "The only way out is through."

The passage is both solid and not, but Gabe knows he's moving by the sound of his lonely footsteps. He can't hear Pete, but it's not that that makes him grow chilled with fear. When he stepped through the passage, that sensation of Pete at his back was gone, as though Pete didn't make it through with him. As though he's still trapped in the glass chamber, hands spread on the wall and feeling blindly for the passage, the glass taking the warmth from his fingertips, feeding on it.

Gabe remembers Gerard's words and takes one more step. It's easier to focus in the passage, easier to move in a straight line, and Gabe has a good memory for the barrows anyway. He takes a step and then another step and it's near automatic, now, and his mind is engaged with Pete Pete Pete, if he's there (he isn't), he has to be (he can't be), what if Gabe fails (he will).

"Saporta, get a grip," Gabe mutters to himself, then calls out, "Pete! I'm here. You can... just... Touch me if you can, follow me if you can't, but just follow me."

Pete doesn't touch him, but Gabe imagines Pete's breath on his neck for a moment and shivers. "Get a grip, get a grip," he chants like a mantra.

Each step is hard to take. It feels as though that severed thread that had tied Pete to him hadn't just snapped, but also dragged out his heart, punching through the meat of his back, leaving his spine intact but bruised, hurting with every step inside the silence.

Gabe wanders through the pathways of the barrow, retracing his steps from memory. It's nothing he hasn't done dozens, even hundreds of times, but what had been freedom before is now crushing loneliness, empty air at his side, at his back, a reminder of everything he had unknowingly missed, gained, and lost.

He starts talking to Pete when he passes through the long chamber somewhere in the middle of the barrow. With the glass walls, the thin beams of light through the thick stone ceiling make it brighter than it had been when Pete and Gabe passed through it before. It's clean, free of bodies, of bone, of dust, but there's no gold here either, nothing to root it to reality and make it worth coming to.

“I'd give anything to have something to stick a sword into,” Gabe says out loud. “I have myself but then we'd really be stuck in here forever. Or maybe not. Maybe that's all I need to do and we'd exchange places. You'd go on, hand me over to Gerard and I'd sit on a shelf in his study gathering dust and listening to him drone on forever.”

Chamber after chamber after passageway, muffled footsteps on a graded plane, slowly rising up from the depths of the barrow to the surface. When they'd been descending to the heart of the place where the Star had been pinned, there'd been movement of air, all of it trickling upward as slowly as liquid glass, as though trying to escape, but now, entombed inside the Star, there's no movement, no indication that there is air at all.

“Can you breathe, Pete?” Gabe wonders aloud, so angry he can barely breathe himself. “Or did you drop dead back there and I'm talking into nothing at all?”

He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, and it's a relief, at least, that in the monstrous stillness of his place he is still human.

“I'm never following your advice again.” Gabe shoulders open another door and ignores everything horrible that he's feeling. “Don't look at me, turn around, just in case. I hate you. I'm going to punch you if we get out of here." He kicks the air and yells louder. "Punch you in the nose, Pete."

Another kick at the air and he falls flat on his face into another passage. Fuck. He could just stay there, alone forever. He rolls into his back, involuntarily jerking his chin up, confused about why he did that.

He breathes in and out deeply. It was to avoid catching any glimpse of Pete. Gabe pictures him standing there, just a step away from Gabe's feet, watching Gabe. It's possible that Gabe wouldn't sense him in this place, that it muffles all odor in addition to sound, and doesn't just break up vision into a thousand slivers of light but masks and smashes that sensation of someone else at his side. Gabe runs his fingers up and down the stone-glass floor, trying to calm down. Pete might be there. There's a chance.

"Can you just say something?" Gabe tries. "No? Fine. Fine."

He wants to test Pete's advice, because if looking won’t collapse the Star around them after all, or whatever it is that Pete was so afraid of, he'll be able to lord it over Pete forever.

"You hear that?" Gabe tells the ceiling and rolls up onto his feet, squeezing his eyes shut until he’s sure he’s turned around the right way. Even sure isn’t quite sure enough, though, so when he opens his eyes he’s terrified.

"Forever," Gabe mutters, blinking away the tears he’s telling himself are perfectly natural after squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as he had. "Didn’t your mother teach you not to touch strange objects in enchanted barrows?"

He gropes his way through the next passage, wiping at his eyes to reduce the splintering in his vision. He's like a fly, he thinks, miniscule, crawling through glass, trying to find his way with unhelpful glass eyes. If he looks back, will he see more clearly?

And then it's the round stone door, and then the first chamber with its branches and bones on the floor that threatened to twist ankles but not kill. In retrospect, maybe that should have been a hint not to venture any further.

There are no bones or branches now. But there is a door, firmly shut but dimly outlined, almost glowing. The light of Gerard's study, maybe. Gerard's study is not Gabe's favorite place in the world, but he'll take it a thousand times over this place.

Gabe takes a deep breath and touches the door. His stomach lurches. "Pete?" he says under his breath and pushes on the door. "You had better be here when I open it, you fucker."

The door doesn't open. Gabe leans on it, pushing his shoulder into it until he feels bone creak and bruise with the pressure of the stone and his armor. "This would be a really good time for you to help me," he groans, pushing harder and nearly yelling at the end of it, and then the door swings open and he falls through, landing on his bruised to all fuck shoulder, curling up on the soft dirt trail and whining in pain. Not Gerard's study, then. The woods again. Soft early summer warmth and birdsong. Usually, this would be welcome, but today it makes Gabe desperately wish for Gerard's study, just twenty minutes away from Gabe's bed, where Gabe could sleep for a month.

Gabe rolls onto his back and doesn't say anything, prolonging the possibility that Pete is there. If he asks him a question now and there's no answer, there won't be anything left to hope for.

He blinks up at the crowns of the trees, head oddly quiet. Okay, he thinks. The word echoes in the silence of his head. He'll go back to Gerard and try again. This time he'll make sure Pete is with him. He'll hold Pete's hand every step of the way.

There's a roar and a rasp of metal that Gabe knows better than he knows most things about himself, and through the shock of recognition Gabe hears another roar and an animal cry of pain, and the ground thuds as Gabe tries to scramble up from the road and look at what the hell just happened.

Pete is standing a few paces away with a bloodied sword and a bear slumped over at his feet. "It was attacking," Pete explains, out of breath. "I didn't want to kill it, but... whoa."

Gabe jogs up to him and knocks the greatsword out of his hand with absolute disregard for any kind of safety so he can finally touch Pete, finally look at him again. Pete lets him, and his eyes even look oddly bright when Gabe palms his cheeks, presses his thumb into Pete's chin.

"Why did you let me lie there and not say anything?"

Pete looks puzzled. "I yelled for you to watch out for the bear. You didn't hear me?"

"Oh," says Gabe, and there's a long pause. Pete's eyes are almost golden in the light.

"So are you going to punch me now?" Pete finally asks in a hoarse voice.

Gabe grabs Pete's hand and squeezes it. "Would it teach you not to grab strange objects in enchanted barrows?"

Pete rolls his eyes, but he's so short that he's just looking up at Gabe, but more. Gabe likes it very much. "Like you wouldn't have touched it if I hadn't."

Gabe shrugs one shoulder and brings their clasped hands up between them. "You would have retrieved me."

Pete raises an eyebrow. Gabe wants to kiss it into place. "If you think for one moment that I could have done what you had..."

"Shut up," Gabe snaps, and Pete shuts up, mouth snapping closed with an audible click. "Also, we're never using soul gems again. Never."

"Most of them are completely safe."

"Never."

"But you look so dashing with a flaming sword."

Gabe looks down at Pete, who's smirking very slightly. "You can teach me fire spells instead."

"What makes you think I know anything about destruction spells?"

"Experience," Gabe says wryly. "Home?"

"My mother would've had a different reply to that," Pete says, giving Gabe a smile that's genuine but with something cautious underneath. Gabe wants to kiss that cautiousness away. 

"I guess I have a lot to learn about you still," says Gabe, restraining himself from kissing Pete but not from grinning uncontrollably. "I wish I'd known the Star would spit us out back here. I'd have brought a horse so I could get you home sooner."

Pete kicks at something in the road. Gabe looks down and his chest twists up in an icy knot. "Stop touching that thing! Wasn't once enough?"

Pete gets down on his knees at looks at it closer, even as Gabe tries to get between him and the Star. "I think you broke it. Nice work, Gabe."

"How in the world would you even know that?" Gabe asks shrilly. "Don't--"

Pete snakes an arm around Gabe's legs and picks up the Star. Nothing happens. "I think you can give this to Victoria without much problem now."

Gabe breathes in and out so he doesn't yell. "Please don't do things like that."

Pete puts the gem in his pocket and jumps up onto his feet. Gabe stops breathing, they're so close. "Hey," Pete says quietly. "I owe you one."

Gabe leans down and kisses him for the second time. "You do not." He strokes Pete's face with his thumb, the healed-over cuts and abrasions, and shivers when Pete turns his head and gives his thumb a shaky, shivery kiss. Gabe leans in again and for a while there's nothing in the entire empire but Pete right next to him and the warmth of the afternoon sun on the back of his head. 

"So," Pete says dazedly when Gabe lets him go. "Are you entirely set on getting back to Whiterun as fast as we can? Or do you need to explain things to your friend?"

Gabe repeats Pete's question back to himself. "Uh. Hopefully Gerard told her. And I'm sure she'll find me quite soon to try to kill me, by which point I hope to have a replacement trinket for her. One that doesn't eat people. So, I suppose not." He wants to get Pete to his bed, the big one, but possibly also Pete's smaller one, and he also wants to track down an amulet of Mara and find out if Pete's amenable to letting Gabe make an honest man of him.

"Because I thought we could see what other kind of trouble we could get into."

Pete's grin is wild, infectious, and Gabe grins back so hard his cheeks hurt.

"We could go to Riften," he says. 

Pete blinks. "Riften?"

"The temple of Mara is there." Gabe bites his nail and drops his hand as soon as he realizes he's doing it. 

"They might think you're dead and give your house away if we don't come back real soon." Pete smiles a little. "The temple of Mara?"

"I don't care about the house. I'll buy us another one. Yes." 

"You're asking me to marry you."

Gabe shrugs and looks up and down the road. One end leads back to Whiterun, one to somewhere else. "You already do my washing." 

Pete kicks him. "If we're getting married, you're washing your own clothes."

Gabe bites his lip, pretending to think, and cracks up when Pete kicks him again. "I can live with that."


End file.
